THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
THE PROCESS OF
GOVERNMENT
A STUDY OF SOCIAL
PRESSURES
By
ARTHUR F. BENTLEY
CHICAGO
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
1908
Copyright 1908 By
The University of Chicago
Published March 1908
Composed and Printed By
The Universit)' of Chicago Press
Chicago, Illinois, U. S. A.
^Q20
TA
TO MY FATHER
33^55
This Book Is an Attempt to Fashion a Tool
ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS
PART I.
TO PREPARE THE WAY
PACE
Chapter I. Feelings and Faculties as Causes ... 3
Section I. As Used in Everyday Speech .... 4
/ Illustrations of the use of feelings, especially sympathy, '^ and of facul-
ties,! as causes of present events, of progress, and of tlie differences
between societiesr\ with reference to conflicting facts, and with sug-
gestion of the difficulties involved.
Section II. Small 26
Section III. Spencer 37
Section IV. Von Jhering 56
Section V. Other Illustrations 91
Ward; Sex and food desires; Westermarck; Gurewitsch; Guraplowicz;
Pearson; Woods.
(
Chapter II. Ideas and Ideals as Causes . . . . no
Section I. As Used in Everyday Speech . . . . no
Stump speeches, party platforms, states' rights theories, sociaUsm
and individualism, as illustrations of pretentious ideas and ideals.
— Typical quotations showing the trust in ideas.
Section II. Morgan 123
Section III. Giddings 128
Section IV. Dicey 136
Chapter III. Social Will 154
Chapter IV. Political Science 1 162] f
Chapter V. Summary f 165/
Criticism limited to purposes of scientific interpretation of society.
The social meanings and values which are inadequately indicated by
feelings and ideas in the uses that have been criticized. Order,
coherency, system. Wherein the feeling and idea theories collapse.
Vanishing points. A theoretical statement of the position assumed.
Process and content. The possibility of a more adequate statement
of the social values.
iz
X ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS
PART II.
ANALYSIS OF GOVERNMENTAL PRESSURES
PAGE
Chapter VI. The Raw Materials 175
l^The raw materials are always activity, nothing else; found in masses
of men. "Relations" as activity^ The values of activities. The
search for values richer than those given by "feelings" and "ideas."
Language activities, an ordinary case of social differentiation; com-
parison with organized institutions. — A more minute examination of
activity, with special reference to the feeling and idea phases. Ten-
dencies to activity as themselves activity. Illustration from anger
activity and from public-corporation activity. — The environment as
a phase of social activity. The physical environment. Absurdity of
"social environment" in scientific study; likewise of "social heredity."
The subjective and the objective from the point of view of activity. —
The place of feelings and ideas. The retention of their meaning. —
Concerning the defining of governmental activities.
Chapter VII. Group Activities 200
Measurement. The best statement of the material will be that which
best favors measurement. (_The practical measuring process in society
itself. — Men in masses. Complexity of their activities. Illustrations
of the way this is represented in reasoning and argument. — Groups.
Their classification. Criss-cross groups. Politjcal gi^oups; their
relation to the underlying groups. The economicBS5is. ', Represen-
tative group activities; their nature. — Interests. Identit^of interests,
groups, activities, interest groups, group interests; these terms all
describe the same fact. The actual observed interest is neither the
group's own valuation of itself in speech, nor any "objective utility"
assumed to be in it. The solid ground in between. Groups can never
be defined absolutely, but always only in terms of each other. — Fac-
tors of dominance; number, intensity, technique.-^The "habit back-
ground;" "rules of the game." Future and past in terms jpf this
4^ background. The " social whole " in terms of this background^'
Chapter VIII. Public Opinion and Leadership 223
Leadership and public opinion; related phases of group process, j
which can best be studied together.^^Leadership of group by group.)
Express adhesion of full membership of represented groups not alway^
necessary. Illustration; legislatures, socialism, a city ordinance.
Individual capacity for leadership an incidental fact. — Boss leader-
ship. Its personal and group phases. The boss and the machine.
Exploitation and mediation. The machine and the public. The
accountability of the boss. — Demagogic leadership. Technique; re-
lation of leader to his following. Complexity of group; life-history
of group. Comparison of boss and demagogic leadership. — The
ruler or mediator; problem deferred .(—Public opinion. It is activity.
ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS XI
PAGE
How it reflects, represents, or leads other activity.^ Inadequacy of any
statement of it as mere opinion. Its "push." ; Illustrations from
municipal ownership movement in underlying groups and in opinion
group. — The differentiation of public opinion; its stages. — Degree
of generality and intensity of public opinion^ No unanimous opinion
representing the whole society. Each opinion group opposed to other
group activities. The political party as both opinion and organiza-
tion. JjfThe vaguer and wider and more pretentious the opinion group
the greater the need of reducing it to substantial representative terms.
^Opinion groups are themselves interest groups^
Chapter IX. Individual Endowment and Race Type . 245
.Group activities las here portrayed are not "up in the air." It does
/ not make tjiem^more real to attempt to hitch them on to individual
"endowment J as psychically stated; nor as physically stated. The
substantial Mature of activity as here used. The individual and social
statement of subsistence facts, of sex facts, of disease, of the use of
intoxicants. The nervous system; brain power and brain work.
Impossibility of correlating nervous complexity and social complexity
as between animal and human societies. The relatively trivial im-
portance of degrees of brain power for social interpretation, so far as
differences have yet been proved to e.xist. — Race type. The physical
or anatomical race. Race pictures in physical terms; their scientific
significance. Von Jhering's analysis. The possibilities in the use of
mental types as tested by' Dewey's suggestions of method. Activity
a broader term than mind as seen in this connection. Wherein the
reality of race facts consists. Group complexes. The deeper group
formations which are usually meant when race oppositions are dis-
cussed. Corollary as to character classes.
Chapter X. Government 258 i
Position thus far gained. — All phenomena of government are phe- ■**>
>- nomena of force, or, better, of pressure. Pressure is group push and \
resistance. No peculiar technique for government. — The three senses
of the term government; government as adjustment of interests with-
out a dififerentiated agency; the governing body; the political pro-
cesses. No logically precise lines. — Why the "state" as such does
not concern us. The trivial place of "sovereignity" among the facts. '
— Illustrations of government as the adjustment of interests. Th^
marriage institution, and the interests that help to form it. — The
group pressures in government. Illustrations of the content of govern-
ment. Interests in government.
Chapter XI. Law 272
Law is government, differently stated. Comparison of senses of
word law with senses of word government. — Law in differentiated
government. The activities involved. iLaw, the hal^itual activity
of groups, enforcing itself through organizea governmcnt.-t-Illustrations
xii ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS
PACK
of activity in law against murder; in law against Sunday saloons. —
Dead-letter law, its statement in terms of activity. Majority and
minority group phases. — The system phase of law. How it is abused
theoretically. Its real importance. The differentiated government in
this connection. General definition of legal phenomena. — Law
activities as striking at other activities. — Representative processes in
law. The group forces that maintain law. Incidental issues.
Indirect representation in law maintenance through government.
How the forces work through the official. Socially indifferent activity.
— The filling in of details by the governing body. Legal theory in the
courts. — Constitutions. — Physical force as but one form of the pres-
sures underlying law.
Chapter XIL The Classification of Governments . 298
In comparing governments, not merely the superficial aspects of the
technique of mediation, but the nature of the interests mediated
must be examined.-— Material for classification is not the " state; Y
not the institutions of government abstractly taken by themselves.
Perfection of adjustment not a test.-^Typical interest group forma-
tions; city-state and nation; locality groups; class oppositions. —
Extreme hypoth^ical types of government with reference to the
interests mediatedX Range of governments studied. — Technique of
mediation; ousting'the ruler; splitting him up into two or more
institutions; controlling certain of his activities by differentiated pro-
cess while he retains office. — Methods of classifying governments;
Spencer; Jellinek; Bluntschli; Ratzenhofer; Leacock; Hobhouse; .
Burgess; Hammond. — Further examination of despotism as a type
of government. It shows no peculiar "absolute power," and no
peculiar "arbitrary will." It involves always representative char- 1
acteristics. Taken strictly as technique of mediation of interests,
however, despotism has a value for comparisons. How it rests on a
class foundation. How other classes are indirectly represented.
How doubling of institutions is a function of doubling of classes on
an approximate equality of strength. Leadership and mediation.
Tribal government. Class-based government. Government where
the groups function freely.
Chapter XIIL The Separation of Governmental Agencies 321
/ The tri-partite div-ision into executive, legislative, and judiciary is
valid only for occasional governments. The separation of the agen-
cies must rest on activities as located roughly in different groups of
persons in the governmental service.— \lllustrations of varying forms
of separated agencies. The tribal go^i^rnment. The German Regier-
ung. England's cabinet and parliament. The United States with
its executive, legislative, and judicial agencies, its constitutional
NTonventions, its parties, and its electorate. The practical test in the
method of control by the "people." — Criticism of the distinction
ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS xiii
PAGE
between the expression and the execution of the will of the people. — \
How the theory of the three powers works as itself an activity in the /
governmental field.
Chapter XIV. The Pressure of Interests in the Execu-
tive 330
Scope of the chapter.— ^Interests in a tribal government. African
kinglets. — Large monarchies, China, Russia, Rome, Greek tyrannies.
— The moperch in Germany, French government in this century,
England.— (The executive in the United States. Play of interests
through the presidency; history of the office. — The presidency under ^^^
Roosevelt; background of the process; the man and the office; illus-
trations from the tariff issue. — Further illustration from the anthracite-
strike arbitration, and the meat-inspection bill.— f-The play of interests
in routine presidential administration; trust-law enforcement; steam-
boat regulation. — The executive and the interest groups in cities and
state governments. — Presidents contrasted vwith despots. The varia-
tions and limitations of executive power. 1
Chapter XV. The Pressure of Interests in the Legis-
lature 360
( Two types of legislatures, those representing special classes, and those
providing free access to all groups of the population. J Argument one
form of the technique of pressures in legislation. 'Qie "unitary will"
and the pressures. — Legislative activity in Rome. The German
Reichstag. France. The British Lords, Commons, and Cabinet. —
The United States federal legislature; its structure as the resultant of
pressures; actual relation to other agencies of government; the
locality basis of representation analyzed in terms of the effective inter-
ests.— The legislative process in Congress. Log-rolling typical in
all legislatures; detested forms; forms veiled by the process of argu-
ment. An illustration of the pressures of legislation in the statehood
bill of 1906. Legislation as to education. — Pressures in city councils.
A saloon-license ordinance. Franchises.
Chapter XVI. The Pressure of Interests in the Judiciary 382
The judge and his reasons. \ Influence 'of group pressures in private
vengeance, clan vengeance, And in adjudication by monarchs and by
differentiated courts, as shown in the initiative, in the penalty, and in
the character qf proof required. -/-Illustrations from judicial process in
United States. Chief Justice Marshall's work. The Dartmouth
College case. 'The Chicago traction case. — The work of legal theory
in the process of adjudication, in its various grades from the philoso-
phy of law down to specific arguments in given suits. How dif-
ferent phaseiJjf theory represent different phases of underlying group
complexes. VPhp position of the court as itself an interest group in
modern societics.^
XIV ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS
PACE
Chapter XVII. Political Parties 400
t The political party as an agency of government; various stages of
"party development; the futility of theoretical objections. Burke's
definition of party superficial. — Parties in the simplest societies;
organization of discussion and leadership; parties as mediating
structure; personality groups. Parties in class governments; the
loosing of parties from class bounds. Parties in despotic monarchies;
in England; in France. — The group forces in the development o£
parties in the United States. Organization outside the legislature.^
The party under a machine with its own group interest promineoT
Main features of party structure; the work of parties in binding
together separated agencies of government and separated locality
governments. — Farther characteristics of party. Policy and party;
public opinion. Superficial classifications; reactionary, conservative^
and radical; offensive and defensive; liberal, feudal, and socialistic. ,'
Summary of main features of party process.
Chapter XVIII. The Electorate and Semi-Political
Groups 423
, The electorate; unorganized forms; organized forms which are akin
to agencies of government. The electorate as a representative body
in two aspects; first, as acting for the non-voters, and second, for
the underlying groups among the voters themselves. Woman's
suffrage. Technique of electorate itself the outcome of group pres-
sures.— Semi-political groups lying between the underlying interests
as stated for themselves on the one side, and the electorate and party
phenomena on the other. Discussion groups; propaganda; the
press. Organization groups; organization for direct influence on
legislation; reform associations; civic administrative leagues. The
legal phase; free association and free speech.
Chapter XIX. The Gradation of the Groups . . 434
Organization and discussion groups not sharply distinguished from
each other. Their interactions. Their relation not merely serial.
Both must be reduced to underlying groups, and the representative-
ness of each in terms of the other must also be made clear. — Various
forms of discussion groups in various grades of representativeness
illustrated in the case of socialism. — ^Types of representation in organ-
ization groups. Class series. — The qualitative similarity of the dis-
cussion and organization groups, both being forms of representative
activity. Their similarity as technique. — The value to be attributed
to discussion and organization groups considered as independent.
Allowance for over-emphasis in earlier chapters. The " own interest "
and the "plus as technique." Ultimate possibilities of analysis.
Chapter XX. Representative Government, Democracy,
and Control by "the People" 447
The theory that the predominance of reasoning offers a test of govern-
ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS xv
PACE
ment. Why it does not. The analysis into underlying groups neces-
sary here also. — The representative and the delegate analyzed. |
Fallacy of regrets over transition from former to latter type. — "Con-
trol by the people" is a phrase indicating but one phase of the many
processes of control which together make up government. What
groups the phrase "the people" , indicates. "Pure democracy"
exists on the discussion level only. , Various structures of control indi-
cated, both those established and those developing. None of them
are the monopoly of either representative government or democracy ^
as those terms are commonly used. — Concerning attempts to picture
whole societies with reference to perfection of governmental process.
Chapter XXI. The Underlying Conditions . . 460
\^The examination of the underlying groups for themselves lies outside
the sphere of this work, which has to do only with their process
through the government. Many conditions may be found which may
be looked upon abstractly as phases of group formation. So the
vital factors of the members of these societies; the physical environ-
ment; wealth conditions; industrial technique; mass of population;
city and country; technique of organization of underlying groups;
and finally the reactions of government itself.
Chapter XXII. The Development of Group Interpre-
tation 465
iGroup interpretation is itself an activity involved in the group process.
Marx and his class struggle. — Gumplowicz' great achievement; its
limitations. — The supplementary value of Simmel's analysis of group
activities. — Ratzenhofer. — Less clearly marked developments.
Chapter XXIII. Conclusion 481
The group factors are the solid and substantial parts of all interpreta-
tions of history. Once analyzed and given a statement free from
the dross of psychic causation, they will provide a firm backbone
for all interpretations of social life. )
Appendix 485
I. Municipal Ownership Interest Groups in Chicago 487
II. The Play of Interests in a State Legislature 490
III. The Play of Interests in a City Council . . 491
PART I
TO PREPARE THE WAY
CHAPTER I
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES
The most common way of explaining what goes on in society,
including of course the processes of government, is in terms of the
fechngs and ideas of the men who make up the society. For the
last fifty years we have heard a great deal about the environment
as a supplementary cause, and in later years much also about the
biologically described man. For the purposes of this book the
environment will take care of itself, while the vital factors can in
due time be assigned their place with Httle difficulty. As for the
old-fashioned feehngs and ideas which make the whole of inier-.
pretation much of the time and which crop out awkwardly all of
the tirnc, they must be given thorough attention before our real
work can begin. They are irresponsible and unmeasurable,
giving indeed an animistic semblance of explaining society, but
actually, to use their own method of speech, blocking explanation
as much as the animism of the forest would block the study of
nature. It is necessary to come to close quarters with them and
to annihilate their false pretenses, before attempting to build
up an interpretation out of the underlying facts which they dimly
hint at, but never actually define. If in this prcHminary task I
use many words and seem a long way from the processes of govern-
ment which are my subject-matter, it is because I feel the need
of making sure against misinterpretation later.
My concern is at no time with psychology, but always with the
process of social hfe, and this, while it is always psychic, can at
no time be understood or explained with the catchwords and
verbal toys of psychology as the starting-point.
The present chapter will deal with interpretations in terms
of feelings and faculties; the next chapter will deal similarly with
interpretations in terms of ideas and ideals. In each case I shall
treat first of the use of the factors in common speech for the every-
3
4 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
day purposes of life, attempting impressionistically to reveal their
defects; and then pass to close examination of certain systematic
theories built up out of them.
I may say now as well as later that I have no care for the fme
discriminations which psychological terminology draws between
motives, feelings, desires, emotions, instincts, impulses, or similar
mental states, elements, or qualities. If I separate such factors
from ideas and ideals it is solely for convenience in discussing
two ill-defined types of social theory. It is not, I repeat, psychic
process that I am going to discuss, but social hfe, which from the
point of view of functional psychology appears as content. The
material is the same, but fine discriminations in psychological ter-
minology used as criteria for classifying the content are not merely
useless but positively harmful.
Section I. In Everyday Speech
We are all of us engaged every day in interpreting our social
life. This person, we say, has deceived us; that one has helped
us. Here we gave way to anger, there we maintained our high
standard of conduct, elsewhere we yielded to a temptation that
forced itself upon us. That man in pubhc life is a charlatan, and
that other is corrupt — therefore they acted in the way they did,
w'hich we disapprove. Here a reform could be accompHshed,
if only people would realize it; there you cannot expect anything
better of men; in some other place the physical Hmitations to this,
that, or the other desired enterprise are showing themselves.
Out of such material our interpretations of politics and govern-
ment as well as of other phases of social life are worked up.
The one secure point in all these interpretations is that they
answer fairly well for the immediate purposes we have in hand.
If experience shows they do not answer fairly well we re\'ise them;
changing not their character but the proportions of their mixture.
For most of us all of the time, for all of us most of the time,
it is quite sufficient to regard human beings as "persons" w-ho
possess quahties or motives which are phases of their character
and who act in accordance with these qualities or this character,
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 5
under certain conditions of life in which they are placed. Much of
the time we subordinate the conditions or ignore them entirely.
Indeed the greater conditions are never known to us. A full under-
standing of the conditions of action is as yet possessed by no one.
When such an understanding is achieved — I do not mean in all
the details in every hfe, but in principle, in technique — when the
"conditions" are absorbed into the action, sociology will be an
estabhshcd science, not a struggle to found a science.
We put the main weight then upon the character, or the motives,
of the actors in the social drama. A man is kind, or violent, or
careless, or "smooth," or stupid, or dishonest, or tricky, or insincere,
or clever, or trustworthy; or, more generally, good or bad, wise
orfoohsh. These are his quahties. They designate "him." They
are put forth not merely as habits of action, labeled by us, but as
his very personality. All this in the current hfe of one man,
judging the others around him. Out of material of this kind we
have built up many theories of the causes of man's activities in
society.
If we are going to come to an understanding of the process
of government, it will be necessary first of all to reckon with these
theories, and, what is more to the point, with the material of which
they are built up. We must test them in social Hfe and activity to
discover what we can "do" with them scientifically, how we can
make them work. We must find out what use they are to us.
Where they are not of use or where they lead us into difficulties
and confusions, we must clear them away.
Let us begin by picking up a few illustrations from everyday
experience. I am walking along the street and see a man bullying
a boy. Some big fellow steps out and knocks the street tyrant
down. A little crowd gathers and cheers the rescuer. I turn to
my friend and ask:
"What made him do it ? Why do they praise him ?"
"He's a big-hearted fellow," he answers. "It's sympathy for
others. He's a credit to our civiHzation."
It is useless to show my friend that he has not answered the
question. He has used a word or words that describe the man's
6 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
act, that indicate a difference between the action of the man in
question and the action of some other men. That is all he is
interested in specifying. If he generahzes it in terms of civiliza-
tion, he goes far beyond his depth, but since he is ignorant of the
deep water, it is useless, as I have said, to show him the point.
What I wanted to know was why this particular kind of "sym-
pathy," concretely, is manifested in our social hfe today; why
"sympathy" expresses itself in this form of protecting a boy who
is merely being hectored or tormented without serious hurt.
The man who got the praise from the crowd is known to me.
Half a mile from where he hves there are w^omen and children
working their Hves out for less than a nourishing Hving. Nearby
an old woman starved to death a few days ago. Child-labor under
most evil conditions is common in the city. A friend of his is
making his wife's Ufe a burden by day and a horror by night.
Yet he does not intervene to save the starving, or to alleviate the
condition of the half-fed workers. He does not join the society
for the prevention of child-labor. He does not use his influence
with his friend to show him the brutahty of his ways.
Is it pure "sympathy," pure "love of man," pure " big-hearted-
ness " that made the man go to the rescue of the boy ? If so our
definitions of the words are indeed inept. The "love of man"
is a strange thing if it can exist as a lump-sum quahty of our hero
and yet not influence him to give his aid where aid — anyone will
admit — is so much more needed. And indeed in earlier ages
this same man with his same physiological structure, as weH as
we can judge, would have shown the "sympathies," that were in
him — and the egoism too — in very different forms. And did his
life he along other lines today, his sympathies would manifest
themselves differently.
When my friend said that sympathy had moved the man to his
act, he did, then, but restate in other words the very question I had
asked. We cannot really put the question — put it, that is, in
an intelligent form — without broadening it out so as to make it
an inquiry about the existence of the particular form of sympathy
in the particular society, manifesting itself with greater or less \igor
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 7
through the various members of that society. We cannot avoid
the difficulty merely by positing sympathy as such, and then limit-
ing it or modifying it in special cases tojcorrespond with external
conditions. That is the method of popular speech, but it is arbi-
trary and artificial; it uses sympathy as the hypothesis for explana-
tory purposes, and then modifies the hypothesis to meet the needs
of every particular case brought up for explanation. It will not
serve for our purposes.
Again there is the case of the ill-treatment of animals. Let
us choose terms for the illustration so that it will be put more
socially, less individually.
Why are horses treated with so much more gentleness now than
they have been at various times in the past ? Why has bear-
baiting come to an end ? Why is cock-fighting comparatively
rare ? Why is the torture of cats and dogs a rare happening
instead of an almost daily sight in the streets and alleys of our
city ? Is it because among Enghsh-speaking peoples in the last
two hundred years there has been a net increase in some soul
quahty known as love, sympathy, kindness ? My friend would
compare Ehzabethan England with the manners of today and
answer out of hand, "Yes, the proof is there in the facts. Men
are growing in sympathy."
And yet I am not answered. For if love of hving beings is
increasing so markedly, why does so much cruelty to animals con-
tinue without the sHghtcst degree of widely spread condemnation ?
Why do we torture .animals in the zoological garden cages ? Why
is the killing of cattle wholesale carried on with the greatest possible
regard for expedition and a lesser regard for the feelings of the
animals ? Why do our hunters shine in the chase of game,
enjoying social admiration, not social condemnation ? Why, in
short, are some particular forms of street and alley torture sup-
pressed and some immensely larger and more common forms of
public torture erected into institutions ? That pure innate quahty
of soul, love, sympathy, kindness, or whatever you wish to call it,
will have trouble in replying.
Is it some absolute humanity which our city people possess in
8 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
unique measure which makes the pigeons so safe at a curbstone
in the crowded district that not even a newsboy will throw a peanut
shell at them with hostile intent ? Yes ? When those same news-*
boys are sleeping behind garbage boxes in the alleys ?
Keeping still to the love and sympathy qualities, in their function
of explaining the events of social life, let us take a still broader
illustration from the field of social progress. The extension of
child-labor legislation is found in every country in which the factory
system of industry has become established. Some regions or
states have Httle of it. Some backward states may be able to
show as yet only the unsuccessful struggle to secure it. But all
will have it in time, and in whatever measure is necessary — which
under similar conditions will be much the same for all.
We see some men and some women abandon their other con-
cerns in Hfe and devote themselves, as it seems, altogether to this
one cause from which they can hope for no personal gain in any way
proportional to the labor they expend. They appeal for laws in
the name of humanity. They deplore the barbarism of the
times when they are failing to get their results. They praise the
increase of humanity whenever they succeed. When they sit
quiet and describe the progress of society they do it in terms of
some meliorism which is founded on an improving human nature.
My friend says: "Yes, we are growing more humane."
But again I am not satisfied. I know that some of the men
who most grievously abuse the children in their factories are most
tender-hearted in other relations of hfe. I know that some of the
strongest workers for the reform are harsh and bitter at times and
in places. I see the bitter draught come from the honey hive, and
the sweet savors come from rancid Hfe.
Nor is that all. I see the workers most eager for the legislation
to protect child-labor shrink back in anger from a proposal which
means fewer deaths by starvation in our cities. I see them tolerate
abuses with indifference which would stir the heart of an Arab
tribe of raiders to its depths, which would bring from the Arabs the
instant relief our own society denies. I have my doubts about
the net growth of human kindness. I want to know why the
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 9
mixed mass of loves and hates and wants which, we say, make
up man have taken this new form of action. And the mere say-so
that there is more of love in the mass tcUs me nothing. Its exist-
ence is an inference, and if true its given working seems a strange
one to follow from the facts.
Here is an illustration of a different kind. A railway rebate
is an act which, considered by itself, is in a class \\ath some simple
courtesy we show to a friend and not to a stranger. It is akin to
the act of the grocer who gives his best box of berries to a regular
customer and his worst to some stranger he never saw before and
expects never to see again. In itself it has no more wrong. Yet
we denounce the rebate-giver and rebate-taker as wicked men.
Rockefeller is made out to be a loathsome villain. But does not
the difference here lie clearly in the importance the two different
kinds of acts have for society at the given time and place ? It
is not, we admit in our calmer moments, some psychic quaUty
in Rockefeller that makes him different from the grocer. Nor
is it a higher morahty in us that makes us condemn him. The
social factors are there. The content of our hves takes different
forms. We must deal with the facts, but we must be careful how
we depend on moral qualities selected to suit our momentary
view of the facts for our explanations.
Again we see the people rise against the "iniquities" of the
Chicago packers. Those iniquities consist of trade tricks and
lack of cleanhness. The packers are denounced as immoral.
The people imply that they themselves would never be so evil
in their hearts. Everyone knows that during the last strike
special houses of ill-fame were provided within the hmits of the
stockyards for the use of the strike-breakers. Popular morahty
condemns such conduct in most stringent terms — theoretically.
But the people took no action. Was it just their morahty that
led them to strike at the beef trust when they did, and in the way
they did ?
In another sphere we find a group of men whom we call
"plutocratic." Some of them are frankly engaged in pursuing
what we call extremely selfish ends. Among them, however,
lO THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
arc others who in the most detached manner imaginable aid them,
argue for them, and vote with them — men whose influence could
not be secured for money or for any price. But we call them all
plutocratic, and we talk of the increase or decrease of the plutocratic
spirit, as though it were a quahty of the human soul. We condemn
them all in a lump for the most part, even though in calmer moments
we are willing grudgingly to admit of some few of them that they
are " plutocratic yet honest." But surely all of these " plutocrats "
are men like the rest of us. They have the same mixed motives,
the same varieties of character. There is no soul-mark that
stamps them, that governs their action.
If we are going seriously to maintain that the increasing desire
for riches, love of wealth, passion for fortune, or what not is the
thing that is ruining the country, as pulpit and press and book-
man so often do maintain, we shall have to close our eyes very
tight to avoid seeing how little, on the side of soul qualities, our
explanation fits the facts, and how, rather, it is nothing more
than a rough verbalism adequate to indicate what the facts are
which we have under discussion, but not adequate to explain
them.
Again, we read in our reform newspaper that the "boss" of
the city is a corrupt man, that his cohorts are corrupt, and that if
they were not corrupt by nature and dishonest through and through
our political evils would not be with us. I will not deny that
corruption is a good w'ord to describe the facts, nor that facts
exist which can be conveniently labeled in this way. But let us
us see whether it is wickedness of the heart, evil of the character,
that will explain the acti\dties of the machine.
Here is a "boss," a well-known man of great power in one of
the largest cities of the country. In the interval of his real work
as boss he serves as congressman at Washington, where he is
intelligent and fairly useful. At least his record there is marked
by no scandal, while his efficiency is enough to place him among
the minor leaders. His local machine, however, annexes every-
thing of value it can get its hands on. If there is ever any local
bribery, jobbery, or thievery on its side of the pohtical fence which
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES ii
it has not itself directly organized and shared in, that will count as a
grave oversight for it.
I heard this boss's most persistent enenTy (from the reform side)
say of him one day: "If X were only honest, he would be a very
useful man in pubhc hfe." But is X dishonest from moral defect
in his own nature ? He is self-educated, self-controlled. He neither
drinks nor smokes. He cares most affectionately for his family.
All his pleasures are taken at his own fireside. One never looks
for him at the haunts of the "good fellows." He is engaged in
various private business enterprises. Once he failed. Later he
paid all his debts. His credit is of the best. His word is as good
as a business man's word can be. If he ever operated any kind of
confidence game "on the side" as many "reputable" business
houses do, the fact has never leaked out. He never deceived a
friend. His lieutenants need nothing from him beyond his simple
word. They get their share in the spoils and are never deserted.
But "spoils" is, of course, his main hne of goods. The looting
of the public is his occupation. He plans and campaigns and
snatches the booty with no more scruples of conscience than
if he were exploiting a gold mine, or deahng wholesale in clothes
from the sweatshop, or running a "pure-food" factory — in the
days before pure food legislation — or merely hving idly on the
income from a fine holding of valuable land. If X is dishonest by
nature, if his soul is corrupt, he has a queer way of showing it —
everywhere except in poHtics. Take him all in all, I cannot make
myself beUeve that the reason the people groan under the burden
of machine poHtics in his city is because he and some other force-
ful men like him have wicked hearts.
It is perfectly true that if he did not act in poHtics as he does,
he would be acting differently, but how does that help us ? What
is there to show that the way he acts is due to his specific moral
quality or character ? Our problem is to fmd out why in a city-full
of men known to us in terms of all their loving-grasping-vice-virtue
complexes of character there develops in the political field a certain
form of systematized corruption. If anyone says that a growing
evil in the hearts of men causes it, he is as ignorant of the character
12 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
of the Fathers as he is blind to the full life activities of the men of
his own times.
One more illustration, this time drawn from a most mighty
manifestation of the social life of America. Through the year
1905 the big mutual life-insurance companies of the country were
under fire. Everyone knows now how the officials of those com-
panies had been acting with perfect complaisance in the man-
agement of the enormous properties :, how favored men's incomes
had been swollen, how families had been built up in wealth, how
policy-holders' dividends had been withheld and squandered, how
legislatures had been bribed, how taxes had been dodged, how
books had been falsified, how pohtical campaign funds had been
aided. When the facts became known a tremendous pubUc wrath
gathered and broke on the heads of the responsible men. It
denounced those men as evil and corrupt, as grafters and thieves
and swindlers. It compared them with all kinds of detested male-
factors in and out of jail. Finally, it thrust them out of their offices
and drove at least one to death, and others to sanitariums and to
exile. It overpowered the legislature of New^ York State, sup-
pressed there in a winter evils that had taken years to develop, and
drove a most efficient legislative machine into astonished servility,
before it was through with its rage. The guilty companies mean-
while, wdth new officials, made some reforms, and more pretenses
of reform, and saved as much of the old system and its perquisites
as they could out of the disaster.
What are we to say of the mental and moral quahties of the
various actors in these events ? Were the presidents who did
wrong and paid the penalty men of lesser moral stamina than
the presidents of an earlier day when different customs prevailed ?
Did some mental or moral quahty decline and did its decline
bring about the evils and losses of which the nation justly com-
plained ? Were the men who, in the pulpit, press, and platform,
denounced the evil-doers men who themselves possessed a higher
morality, a greater quantum of the needed mental quahty ? Were
the new officers who took charge of the companies after the e\-il-
doers had been driven out men of personally higher standards ?
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 13
Did the reform come, in short, because the decHne in virtue had
been stopped and because an increase in \'irtue had come in its
place ?
For anyone who knows the Hves of the actors, who looks straight
at their lives in the very moment of action, I think the answer
inevitably will be. No. The reforms came. They brought new
forms of action, and these new forms we call more moral and more
honest. And the old forms will certainly not recur in all their
crudity on the moment and perhaps not at all. But as for a
change in the character of men which brought these things about?
if it is here at all, we know of it only by inference from the facts
of the change itself. It is a figure of speech rather than a quahty
of men useful to explain their deeds.
What was to be seen, in actual human hfe, was a mass of men
making use of their opportunities. The insurance presidents and
trustees saw opportunities and used them. Their enemies in
the fit time saw opportunities and used them. The "pubhc" by
and by awoke to what it had suffered, saw its opportunities for
revenge and for future safeguards and used them. All these
things happened, all of them had causes, but those causes cannot
be found in a waxing and waning and change or transformation
of the psychic quahties of the actors.
Who will agree today with Aristotle's explanation of the rela-
tions of slaves and freemen ? Slaves, he says, are slaves by nature.
Freemen are freemen by nature : "From the hour of their birth,
some are marked out for subjection, others for rule."' "He who
participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, reason,
is a slave by nature."^ "It is clear, then, that some men are by
nature free, and others slaves, and that for these latter slavery is
both expedient and right. "^ "For the slave has no dehberative
faculty at all; the woman has, but it is without authority (or>
"inconclusive"), and the child has, but it is immature. "-^
Yet what Aristotle was doing in these passages was to trace social
relations down to psychic quahties, just as we trace them today,
' Aristotle, Politics (Jowctt trans.), I, S, 2. 3 Ibid., I, 5, 11.
» Ibid., I, 5, 9. 4 Ibid., I, 13, 7.
14 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
so far as the method of the explanation goes, when we use psychic
factors to explain social life. The inadequacy of such an explana-
tion becomes strikingly clear to us when we disagree with the
concrete use of it.
We have been considering in the main illustrations dealing
with the feelings or moral character of men. These phrases of
Aristotle's concern not only character but intellectual capacity.
Let us turn to this latter phase of such interpretations and examine
intellect considered as a power or quality of the individual man;
directing attention still to our everyday methods of speech with a
view to seeing just how much authority they have.
Here is a man whom the world calls great. Here is another
who hvcs the life of a clod. The one produces a great scientific
work, a great painting, a great poem; the other digs the soil under
a foreman's orders and never rises above such work. Our ordinary
speech forms put it that the one has a great intellect and the other
is stupid. We modify this manner of statement by quahfying
factors, so that in case of its manifest inadequacy we can take
into account variations of "character" or the influences of the
"environment," but we do not desert the theory that a diflference
of brain or mind power is behind the respective achievements-
The theory with its quahfications works fairly w^ell for our
practical purposes. We know that dog brains do not produce
written poems. We know that idiots are similarly ineffective.
We know that in the acquirement of the education of the schools
there are great differences between individuals. We know that
we can easily explain something that interests us to one man, but
only with the greatest difficulty to another. We readily forget
that if something different were being explained the relative
alertness might be just the reverse. We build up a scale of intel-
lectual capacities, with an Aristotle or a Shakespeare or a Kant
or a Goethe or a Darwin or a Lionardo or a Michelangelo at the
top, and grade it down to the peasant or day laborer.
But what after all do we have upon which to base our judgments
as to the relative ranks of different men, except just their accom-
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 15
plished works ? What are we grading except their achievements,
as we estimate them ? What personal factors have we behind the
achievements to explain the achievements by ?
I am not insisting that there is no difference in "brain power,"
if that phrase may be used, between men. I am not saying that
such differences can never, in some respects at least, be taken into
account; it would be foohsh indeed to erect a verbal barricade
against the future. I am only saying that as our knowledge now
stands, within the range in which we find men in social life, we ob-
serve nothing in the facts before us to justify the assertion that any
achievement, as socially judged great or small, rests directly on an
intellectual capacity correspondingly great or small — nothing, that
is, to justify the assertion scientifically, however well the common
phrases may suit our practical everyday needs.
Everyone knows how men who today have world-wide fame were
neglected by their own generations, and how the favorites of one gen-
eration may be forgotten by the next. A Rembrandt closed his life
in poverty and neglect. A Mendelssohn has passed from idoHzation
to comparative indifference inside of a century. The great school-
men have passed into deep obscurity. There are nation-wide and
world-wide fads in literature and in all the arts and in science too.
We recognize this, but we continue to emit judgments as though
our own standpoint were the stable base to which all others must
relate themselves as aberrations. We are apt to forget that all
of these scales of valuation are relative; that, with but a sufficiently
long sweep, there is reason to suspect that even our firmest sub-
stratum of scientific knowledge would show the same relativity;
and that we have no way of disproving in all this limitless variety
of different standards of judgment that possibly the man humblest
now would stand out most strikingly in another setting: and that
by this very token we must rest our judgment on the achievement
itself, not on some alleged genius or ability lying behind the
achievement.'
' Tolstoi's articles on " Shakespeare and the Drama " {Fortnightly Review,
December, 1906, January, 1907) are illuminating from this point of view; his own
outlook on life so clearly determines his entire criticism.
i6 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
I am perfectly well aware that the point I am trying to make
is utterly incliffercnt so far as the processes of ordinary speech are
concerned, but I will show later on how very important it is when
the question is the exact interpretation of society, and how weak
are the methods of interpretation built up out of these speech
forms.
What few attempts have been made to estimate the capacity of
the man behind his achievement only serve to show the tenuous
nature of the theory. Laboratory studies in experimental psy-
chology do not hitch the man on to the social achievement; at
the most they indicate in a limited way different degrees of fitness
in different persons for different kinds of achievement, something
there is no thought of denying. Measurements of skull capacity
throw no light on genius. Raymond Pearl as the result of an
elaborate statistical study of nationahties, concludes that "there is
no evidence that brain weight is sensibly correlated with intel-
lectual ability."^ Hansemann, in his study of von Helmholtz'
brain, says the same thing as the result of a different line of
investigation.^ Nor do studies of the shape of the skull — the
long-headed, the broad-headed — give any aid.^ The convolutions
of the brain do not differ among different peoples. The human
convolutions can be matched even in the brains of chimpanzees.
If a discriminative investigation is to be made it must be pushed
much deeper into the brain processes than any microscope or
stain has yet penetrated. It would take statistics of tens of
thousands of cases to give results, and even then who could say
that the structure showed the cause of the work that was done,
rather than being merely the track of the function which was the
work itself ?"*
The illustrations I have given thus far in this section have been
chosen to show what kinds of explanation we currently make and
I Biometrika, Vol. IV, p. 83.
* Zeitschrijt fur Psychologie iind Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, Vol. XX, p. 4.
3 See, for example, Ripley, Races oj Europe, p. 40; Reid, Principles oj Hered-
ity, p. 292; Pearl, loc. cit., p. 83.
* Compare also the criticism of Pearson in sec. v of this chapter.
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 17
currently find satisfactory for events around us. Their common
characteristic is that some psychic quality, of goodness or badness,
of love or hate, of intelligence or lack of intelligence, or some mixture
of such qualities, is taken to explain what the actors have done.
The explanations do not make impossible an attempt to go back
of the psychic qualities and ask what caused them. Some event
in Tom's career may be pointed out to show why he became kind-
hearted, or his quality may be traced to "mental heredity." One
insurance company president may be said to have seen another
suffer for his sins, and to have learned from him to be a better man
himself. But usually it is not felt necessary to go behind the per-
sonal quahty.
Now the feature of these personal qualities to which attention
must specially be given is that they are looked upon as a sort of
"thing" acting among other "things" in the social world. They
are a sort of "stuff," different, or not different, as one likes, from
the material "stuff" of the world, but in either case interacting
with the latter in series of events that can be Unked together,
with each event in the series explaining the other that comes
after it. For example, Tom sees the bully maltreating the boy.
The bully act is there first. It knocks against Tom's "sym-
pathy." The sympathy makes Tom act in a particular man-
ner. The bullying is stopped by the impact. Brain states, or
soul states, forming this "stuff" — it is all one in the practical
explanation.
It is like billiard balls on a billiard table. The cue ball is
some moral or other feeling, or capacity, and it knocks against
another ball, which is some other person or thing or institution,
and shunts it off to knock in turn against a third ball, which may
be either a feeling or a thing. Thus the social process is supposed
to go on.
Is this too crude a statement of such explanations ? I readily
admit its crudity. But does not the ordinary discussion of the
place of edutation in social life adopt just this theory ? Does it not
treat so many boys and girls as having so many minds made up of
so much feeUng- or thought-stutT ? Docs it not say, Come, let us
l8 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
heap up thought-stuff in such and such ways anfl it will produce the
results we desire later on ?' And is it not by the proof of experience
forever and ever wrong ? Does it ever get results in that way ?
I am not denying that education exists and that it has its place and
that there are good reasons for its existence, any more than I have
denied in the illustrations above that kind-hearted acts occur, that
child-labor laws are passed, that bosses exist, that insurance-
reform laws have been passed, or that great works of art have been
produced. I am only denying the "stuff" theory or explanation
that is used in connection with them. I am denying that such an
explanation explains anything.
The ordinary question concerns the creating of new psychic
quaUties, the increasing of the amount of some old ones, the
suppressing of some other old ones. The real question — the ques-
tion we must face — is, why the living, acting men and women
change their forms of action, cease to do now what they did formerly,
use their "quaUties" in some places and not in others, in short
live the particular social lives they do live. Whenever anybody
steps forward with any method by which he can show that there
actually exists at one time more of one of the psychic quaUties,
the "stuff," than at any other time, it will be perfectly legitimate
to take it into account. So long as such "stuff " is used in explana-
tion of the forms of our social actions on no better ground than
that we assume changes in the "stuff" from the mere fact of the
changes in the modes of action, then it is no explanation. It may
answer the purpose of the bystander as he compares Tom with Bill.
But it explains nothing at all. When real explanations begin to
appear, the use of the old forms ceases even to desers-e tolera-
tion as harmless. It becomes positively harmful as continually
creating a false sense of security and comprehension, when no
security and no comprehension exist. It is only in the most
superstitious circles that people nowadays say a man is "lucky"
by nature, because they observe he has what they call luck; and
the doctrine of original sin as explaining men's shortcomings is
I For one among a hundred crass illustrations see J. W. Jenks, Citizenship
and tJie Schools, pp. vi, 37, 51, 52.
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 19
not often seriously discussed. But both the luck and the original
sin are at bottom just as substantial as these soul qualities I am
criticizing.
We find that if we are going to use this soul-stuff to explain
social activities we must be able to show either qualitative changes
in it, or quantitative increases of some forms of it, or our explana-
tion will come to nothing. What is more, we must show this in
some other way than by mere inference from the facts we propose
to explain. If we are going to infer a soul quahty from the social
fact and then use the quality to explain the fact, we put ourselves
on a level with animists in the most savage tribes. A branch falls.
It was the Hfe in it or behind it that threw it down. Thunder
peals. It is a spirit speaking. The grain grows. It is the spirit
of the corn pushing it up. This man is a slave. It is because
such is his nature. The pigeons are left unharmed. It is because
we are growing more humane. We pass child-labor laws. It is
because we will not tolerate abuses our fathers tolerated. That
man is a boss at the head of a corrupt machine. It is because he
is dishonest by nature. This man wrote a great book. It is
because he had a giant intellect.
The stick, the storm, the crop need no spooks to explain them.
The child -labor laws, the sparing of animal hfe, the corrupt pohtics,
and even the great book will not be explained while such spooks
interfere.
It may be said, however, that while these feehngs and capacities
do not manifest themselves so that we can make sure of them in
restricted areas and in brief periods, nevertheless a glance across
the ages or a comparison of high races with low races will bring an
underlying soul-stulT dilTerence to Hght. Suppose we 'examine
some of the facts which lie on tlie surface with reference to this
hypothesis, not, of course, in order to make an exhaustive study
of them, but merely to bring to light the character of the problem
that is involved.
It used commonly to be said that modern men had greater
brain power than men of "ancient-history" days. Aristotle, in his
20 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
generation, had much the same feeling, for we find him contrasting
the times "of old" when "men of eminent virtue were few," with
his own period in which "many persons equal in merit arose,"*
and even using this as the basis of a theory of government. But
few students now have any interest in such assertions. The
crudity is too apparent. Hear, for instance, Ratzel, who says that
it is doubtful whether we are today "in physical or intellectual
power, in virtue, in capacity, any farther ahead of our generations
of ancestors than the Tubus are of theirs.""
Suppose one should try to get hght on this question by comparing
Itahan art of the Renaissance with the Hallstatt culture or with
Etruscan art. Could he possibly hope to disentangle from the
complex of social achievement anything that would justify him
in saying that greater brain power had been shown in one period
than in the other? Or suppose he should start proudly with Sir
Isaac Newton, or, if he Hked, with Darwin, and find himself
suddenly under necessity of comparing these men with the men
of Chaldea who discovered the echpse period. Would the very
problem he had set himself not reduce itself to an absurdity ? Or,
again, suppose he should compare the steam locomotive of today
with the first seizure of iron from its concealment in the ore. Only
a bhnd confidence that he was deahng with the very basal problem
of society, and that he must get an answer to the question in terms
of soul capacity, would nerve him to produce one.
If instead of comparing antiquity with modern times one
tries to make comparisons between the races of today as to their
mental capacity, one must face at once such difficulties as that
presented by Japan. Twenty years ago all the world "knew " that
Japan was lacking in brain capacity and that the Japanese were
of a lower order of humanity. And today ? Yet the Japanese
people has not been physically or psychically remade in a genera-
tion.
But Japan is only an illustration on a great scale of what is
manifest in isolated cases in a thousand places. A few months
1 Politics (Jowett trans.), Ill, 15, 11.
2 History oj Mankind, Vol, I, p. 4.
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 2i
ago a pure-blooded Zulu took first honors in oratory at Columbia
University. A pure-blooded Indian, Benite Pablo Juarez, presi-
dent of Mexico, was a man of admittedly high rank among con-
structive statesmen. Another pure-blooded Indian, a Mohawk,
was distinguished as a physician and as the successful head of a
great mutual insurance society in Canada. The Maoris of New
Zealand have taken to schooHng and civilized life with great ease.
There was a famous school of aborigines in Austraha that took
higher honors for a year's work, once upon a time, than any school
of white children. Our own schools in the Philippines have
wonder-tales of acquisitiveness to send us. These illustrations
do not prove anything positively, but they throw the theory of
brain capacity into the most serious difficulties.
Permit a warning again. I am not denying that there may have
been in fact a development of nerve and brain structure since human
life began, any more than that there was such a development before.
Nor am I denying that by a process of selection a greater propor-
tion of the men of today may have a more complex structure than
of the men of the Stone Age. I am only insisting that there is
nothing in human achievement to prove the reality of either of
those possibilities, and that, inasmuch as they caimot be independ-
ently established, it is a purely arbitrary assumption to place
them as causes behind human achievements; and especially is
it arbitrary so long as the process of social life and achievement
has not been fully studied for itself, apart from any theory of brain
power behind it.
So much for the mental capacity in history. And now how is
it for the sympathy factors ? Here I will put together certain
current opinions with facts taken from the works of careful students
to show how impossible it is to locate any growth of sympathy in the
way the theory demands.
First a bare reference to Kropotkin's Mutual Aid, that store-
house of information about institutions and methods of co-opera-
tion and assistance, covering not merely ancient village communities
and Middle Age guilds, but also animal communities. Kropotkin
2 2 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
wrote, it is true, to correct his own misinterpretation of evolutionary
theory, and his study led him no farther than to substitute as the
underlying motive of society something broader than love or
sympathy, namely an "instinct of human solidarity,"' a factor
of the same kind as the former. His material, however, well
serves our purpose here of indicating the ultimate mcaning-
lessness of all such interpretations in terms of instincts; for he
shows us sympathetic facts in great masses through the whole
range of social life, animal and human. Anyone who will may
turn through his pages for their bearing upon this point. What-
ever inferences one may draw, certain it is that an inference that
sympathy as such has increased quantitatively throughout history
will not be among them.
I will cite one or two illustrations from other sources. Ameri-
cans, because of the w^ars of the colonists w^ith the Indians, con-
tinue to speak of the native tribes of their continent as cruel,
bloodthirsty savages. And of course it was the "nature" of the
Indians to be such. Here are a few passages to consider, all
with the authority of Lewis H. Morgan: "It is a reasonable-
conclusion .... that in all Indian villages and encampments
without distinction the hungry w^ere fed through the open hospitality
of those who possessed a surplus."^ "Ordinarily they try to have
one year's provisions on hand."^ "Crimes and offenses were
so infrequent under their social system that the Iroquois can scarcely
be said to have had a criminal code."'' Here we have benevolence,
foresight, and brotherly love, more than Utopian. E\'idently
one must be careful in the qualities he attributes to the IndiaiL-
in explanation of his conduct. ^
There is a good illustration in Letourneau comparing the
1 See the introduction to Mutual Aid, a Factor of Evolution, pp. xiii, xiv.
2 Morgan, Houses and House Lije of American Aborigines, p. 56.
3 Samuel Gorman, Laguna Village Indians; quoted by Morgan, House Life,
p. 74.
4 Morgan, League of the Iroquois, edition of 1901, Vol. I, p. 321.
s For illustrations of the discipline and self-control of primitive peoples, one
may examine Crawley, The Mystic Rose, chap. \'i.
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 23
Indians with the early Germans, which is useful to anyone who is
tempted to trace social development back to psychological qualities.
At the end of a chapter in \vhich he discusses the political condition
of "barbarous Europe," that is, of all European people except
Greece and Rome, in the time of Caesar, he mentions some of
the most striking social characteristics which these peoples had
in common and then compares them with American Indian tribes.
In fundamental matters he finds a very close analogy.' He
compares especially certain Scythian, German, Celtic, and Iberian
quaHties with the Hurons and the Sioux. For our purposes we
do not need to go behind Letourneau's impression of the resem-
blance as he states it, his scientific standing being quite sufhcient
to justify calling him to witness.
Now if the resemblance was there, both in institutions and in
character, one would expect, so far as such psychic quahties count
as factors, that the lines of evolution would be much the same.
The lines of evolution were, however, so strikingly different that
one has difficulty in' bringing these similar factors into the
reckoning at all; and this even though, as Letourneau himself
says, Rome played much the role in ancient Europe that the
Europeans played toward indigenous America.^ Letourneau is
in the habit of interpreting in terms of instincts and similar factors, ^
and so in this case in order to explain the inconsistency which
his own remarks draw attention to, he assumes some additional
I Letourneau, V Evolution politique dans les diver ses races humaines, p. 407 :
"Vue dans son ensemble et en ne tenant compte que des analogies fondamenlalfs,
I'Europe preromaine etait, pour I'etat social et politique, assez comparable k
I'Americiuc du Nord, alors que Christophe Colomb la decouvrit Tout
ccla rappclle fort les moeurs des Sioux et des Hurons. Pour I'etat politique, la
ressemblance est plus grande encore."
» Ibid., p. 408: "Dans I'Europe ancienne, Rome a joue Ic role des Europeens
dans I'Amerique indigene."
3 To show how Letourneau himself depends on instincts and psychic characters
in his own interpretation, the following is in point: "Old inherited instincts form
the basis of the human mind, and the superposition of innate tendencies is exactly
comparable with that of the earth in geology. The spirit of progress and liberty
is only a thin bed scarce covering the mighty moral strata bequeathed to us by our
forefathers." — Property, Its Origin and Development, p. 352.
24 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
"qualities'" in the Germans which would have made them evolve
even if left uninfluenced by outsiders. He merely assumes these
quaUties for his purpose, but does not attempt to elaborate them.'
I refer to this here simply to show how such psychic factors
as we have in mind are discovered by the persons who use them,
how they are put to work to give the appearance of explanation,
and how similar supplementary factors ad lihilum are dragged
in to fill out the interpretation. From the given facts one infers
the quaUties. The qualities are supposed to produce the facts.
But conflicts arise. Then one assumes other qualities to fit
the varying cases.
It would be easy to take up many of our modern characteristics
or institutions which are relied on to prove the existence of an
admirable spirit of humanity in our own times, and show the fallacy
of the inferences that are made for them. If hospitals are named,
they can be offset by ancient "temples of health" and by the
spring hygienic festivals of savages — I do not, of course, mean
for efficiency as tested by present standards, but for the function
they served. If bloodshed is mentioned and we are made out
to be milder than our forefathers, there are our huge wars and our
factory death-rolls and even our Fourth of July celebrations to
take into account as three among many factors that give the lie
to our alleged \drtue. If education is named, a great array of
facts from Egyptian occultism to Polynesian "initiations" should
be considered. Our modern forms of prostitution can hardly be
called more humane than those of older ages. Do the nations of
western civilization utiHze their resources as China utiHzes its
resources, so far as the "virtues" of prudence and foresight go?
And when benevolence is mentioned, what can we put forth to
I U Evolution politique, p. 408: "Neanmoins les populations de I'Europe
possedaient d6jk des qualites natives, qui les auraient sdrement tirees de la bar-
baric. Spontan^ment elles auraient 6volue vers une civilisation plus relevee, si
Rome leur en avait laiss^ le temps."
» One may get at this same problem on the opposite side by asking why it was
that the Aztecs and the Red Indians, being apparently of the same ethnical stock,
had such di£ferent histories, if psychic quahties determine development.
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 25
ofifset Arab hospitality or the care for the poor in any one of a
thousand tribes ?^
The truth is that if one should start out on the theor}- that such
psychic factors as these could be discovered and called into play
for explanatory purposes, and if one should make a serious attempt
to compare races and periods with a view to discovering them,
one would need to adopt a very elaborate and careful procedure.
It would be necessary to take two peoples and try to fit the one
into the exact circumstances of the other, barring only the factor
of race character, to see what would develop. It is not enough
merely to note that there are in fact differences between peoples,
nor is it enough to transplant a lot of adult men bodily from their
environment to a strange environment to see what would happen,
as, for instance, Bushmen to Wall Street. One would perhaps have
to take a selected number of Bushmen babies and an equal number
of American babies, give them all the identical home training
and outside education, and test the results on a large scale. But
while a test vnth a hmited number of indi\iduals may be partially
possible, it is manifestly impossible to transport a whole Bushman
tribe into the new environment on fair terms with persons bom into
it. Even less is it possible to isolate the alleged soul qualities
of different races in scientific analysis so as to give ground for a
fair conclusion. If one could think one race over into the environ-
ment of the other he would find that by the time he got it fully
enough into the other emaronment for a fair analysis, it would no
longer be the race he started with, but it would actually be that
other race, and the very test he was trying to make would have
disappeared.
It is easy enough to imagine the bodies of one set of men sub-
stituted for the bodies of another set. We can easily see that the
habitual social activities of one set would not be reproduced by the
other set forthwith. But when we try to give the one set a fair
I Letourneau says that when a destitute Bedouin tells the chief of his need
the chief summons the rich men of the tribe and says: "One of our brethren is in
want. If you wish him to die, suffer me to kill him instead of hunger. If not, go:
you know your duty." Whereupon the needy man is straightway equipped for a
new start toward prosperity. — Property, p. 199.
26 'mi: I'RocESS OF government
cliancr to juhipl itsilf lo llu- activities of the other set, we find in
the end that such activities are all we know, and that there is no
underlying "vital factor" left for us to deal with — at least until
that imjjrobable lime comes when some tens of thousands of Bush-
men, or other "low race," babies are l>rouf^ht uj) in American or
Euroi)ean homes with the identical love, care, and assimilation
that the born babies of the families receive.
I am perfectly well aware that I have given this whole matter a
superficial treatment. But the truth is that a superficial treatment
was needed first of all to show wherein the real problem lies.
When I have finished with my examination of the theoretical
systems constructed out of feelings and ideas I shall return in
Part II, in connection with direct examination of the process of
government as it actually goes forward under our eyes, to a con-
sideration of some of the real relations which the biological man
and the conditions under which the social process is carried on
bear to social interpretation.
Section II. Small
The denial that the psychical qualities of individuals can be
used in explaining social activities will perhaps appear absurd to
some readers, while to others it will appear a quibble. The
former will say that the given fact in human society is the man
who desires and that it will be impossible to build up any inter-
pretation of social phenomena except by taking him with his given
psychical content or capacity, and learning how he "works."
The latter will say that I have been knocking down a straw man,
and that as a matter of fact nobody assumes such soul-stuflf as
that to which I have entered objection.
While I cannot hope fully to satisfy the former critics till I
reach the constructive chapters of this book, I shall nevertheless
proceed now to show how such soul-stuff is actually used by
sociologists and other investigators of social phenomena, and what
the difficulties are into which it leads them. I shall do this through
an examination of the positions of Small, Spencer, and Jhering,
followed by less extended references to some other writers.
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 27
Professor Albion W. Small interprets society by the aid of
social forces.
The concept "social forces" has a real content [he says]. It represents
reality. There are social forces. They are the desires of persons. They
range in energy from the vagrant whim that makes the individual a temporary
discomfort to his group, to the inbred feelings that whole races share. It is
with these subtle forces that social arrangements and the theories of social
arrangements have to deal.'
He classifies desires into six kinds which he names desires of
(i) health; (2) wealth; (3) sociability; (4) knowledge ; (5) beauty,
and (6) rightness. Sometimes and for some purposes he calls
them interests instead of desires, and sometimes he uses the terms
motives or ends.^ He starts with them as qualities or character-
istics of individual persons. Occasionally he uses them as general
groups into which many var}'ing desires can be classified. Again
he uses them as tests for the classification of social phenomena.
But always he comes back to the soul-stutT idea. There is a
confusion lurking in all his discussions of these desires, which
cannot be cleared away, I think, until he drops the soul-stuflF
entirely, and takes the facts simply as social phenomena at their
simple social value.
I shall criticize sharply his inconsistencies and contradictions,
but I do not want to be taken as criticizing his entire method of
interpretation. At times, it seems to me, he rises to an entirely ade-
quate use of "interests" as social forces. But, if I am right, it is
only in the degree in which he strips off" the "personal-qualities"
idea and forgets all about the soul-stulT that he succeeds. When
the knife is applied to this latter clement then the "interests"
which are left will prove to be genuine facts, and at the same
time forces, of society. ^
' Small, General Sociology, p. 536.
2 For a discussion of these terms sec. ibid., pp. 435, 436, 445, 535.
3 I shall pay no attention here to the question whether his classification of the
interests into these si.x is well made. My whole criticism will concern solely the
validity of the use of any such interests in this manner, without regard to the par-
ticular interests that are selected.
28 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
The earliest ])rcscntalion of his theory with which I am
acquainted is to be found in the Inlroduclion to the Study of Society.
In this book we are given man as one of the two elements of society,
the other being hind, i.e., the physical environment. To learn
about man we must go to physiology and psychology. Psychology
shows us man as a bundle of wants, or desires. "Social inter-
pretation must begin with an analysis of these desires, and must
observe the conditions of their emergence.'" "History is the
record of social action with reference to conceptions of human
wants.'" The first duty of the sociologist is to classify these
wants. The preliminary classification offered to us is as follows:
GROXJPS OF PERSONAL WANTS
a) Wants immediately connected with the activity of the physical
functions.
b) Wants immediately connected with the use of material goods.
c) Wants immediately connected with the activity of social instinct.
d) Wants immediately connected with the activity of intellect.
e) Wants immediately connected with the activity of aesthetic judgment.
/) Wants immediately connected with the activity of conscience. ^
These are immediately rechristened with the six terms already
mentioned, health,'* wealth, sociability, knowledge, beauty, right-
eousness (since called rightness).
Now the first thing to note is that the criterion for this classi-
fication seems to come from the individual physique or intellect.
We find the specific marks to be in one case "physical functions,"
in another the "using" of goods, in a third an instinct, and in the
three others faculties of the soul.
Apparently, then, the standards are of a kind which the man
brings into society ready made — in other words, his body and
soul-stuff. But if that is the case Professor Small tends immediately
to abandon the position, for in his next paragraph he tells us in
ejBFect that these wants are experienced by different persons in
I Small and Vincent, An Introduction to the Study of Society, p. 173.
» Ibid., p. 174. 3 Ibid., p. 175.
4 The health interest includes such various things as sexual desire, hunger,
and the "work interest," or impulses to play and to feats of skiU. See General
Sociology, p. 197.
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 29
very different and even contradictory ways, and we get the table
worked over in the following somewhat more objective form :
CONCEPTIONS OF PERSONAL SATISFACTIONS
a) Satisfactions of physical functions, from unrestrained animalism to the
perfect body, as an instrument of highest life.
b) Satisfactions of possession, from "material possessions the ultimate
good" to "the trusteeship of wealth."
c) Satisfactions of social instincts from wolfishness to brotherhood.
d) Satisfactions of mental activity; from being in servitude to the physical
to becoming the ultimate end of effort.
e) Satisfactions of aesthetic feehng; from delight in the hideous to deifi-
cation of beauty.
/) Satisfactions of conscience; from fetichism to theosophy.'
I do not quote these tables to call attention to the curious
assumptions involved, though all of these assumptions are signifi-
cant, and Professor Small has never been able to get rid of the
tangles they set for his feet. The old classification of "faculties"
must be valid and it must be capable of co-ordination with "physi-
cal functions" and instincts, if the classification is to have any
value at all. For each want in the sense of "thing wanted" there
must be a peculiar desire in a brain. This must be true down
to the finest shades of desire, and at the same time the "wants"
and desires must be capable of classification in identical schemes,
and the most general terms describing desires must in a very
real sense, involving a certain psychical unity, include all the
lesser shadings of desires under them. There must be six definite
great desires, each including an infinite number of definite varieties.
The point I wish particularly to make is that if "wolfishness"
and "brotherhood" are two satisfactions flowing from one kind of
desire; if works of ugliness and works of beauty both satisfy the
same aesthetic feeling, if greed acts and benevolence acts are
similarly hnked together; we have ground for the suspicion that
what is here classified is not desires at all, but rather social activities
grouped with a rough empiricism, and attributed for their origin,
in purely gratuitous manner, to desires — as soul-stutT — which are
called into existence to match. And indeed this suspicion is not
weakened by the fact that the three "faculties" are used as criteria
I Introduction to the Study oj Society, p. 176.
30 I lli; I'ROCESS OF GOVKRNMENT
in thf lir.st taMc Tlirrt- is rcison cnouj^h to believe thai those
fiuulties themselves have been empirically inferred to exist because
certain groups of social activities have been found which they are
needed to exi)lain on a ^^ood old-fashioned soul-stufT basis.
\Vc may say that what Professor Small's theory comes to llicn
— statin}^ not merely his own contribution but also its social setting —
is that certain rough groups of social activities are first taken; that
it is inferred next that there must be desires or wants corresfX)nding
to each ; that these main desires or wants are set up, six in number,
as the springs of social action; that all specific desires as found
from day to day in individual men are brought under these six
classes, no matter how they quarrel when fastened together;
and that fmally it is asserted that because the six great desires
have been named, we are given in them a classification of social
activities which is for that reason valid.
It is all a vicious circle which starts with a rough, untested
guess, and comes out in a rough, untested guess, with nothing but
metaphysics in between. It is no better when it finishes than
when it began, and no appeal to "desires" or other things in the
soul makes it any more plausible.
Professor Small would no doubt say that it is exceedingly unfair
to take this early statement of his theory and judge him by it. I
have however only taken it to show the confusion at its fountain
head. Later on he adopted the term "interests," which, I believe
docs not appear at all in his first discussion. With it he has worked
the theory over, but only to fall into deeper and deeper morasses,
except at those times when he disregards it entirely and goes
straight ahead with actual social facts as they present themselves
to his trained eye.
To show Professor Small's difficulties I will first of all quote a
few sentences from various parts of his writings.
Every desire that any man harbors [he says] is a force.' ....
An interest is a plain demand for something regardless of everything
else.' ....
' Central Sociology, p. 536.
' Ibid., p. 201. This sentence applies, Professor Small tells us, to interests
"in the most general sense" and also to interests "in the most particular sense."
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 31
Interests are the simplest modes of motion which we can trace in the con-
duct of human beings.' ....
While biology and psychology have to do with the individual when he is
in the making, sociology wants to start with him as the finished product.' . . . .
All action that goes on in society is the movement and counter-movement
of persons impelled by the particular assortment of these feelings which is
located in each.^ ....
Before science that is properly social begins, .... analysis of individual
traits must have taken into account all the peculiarities of individual action
which betray the individual impulses or springs of individual action which
are the units of force with which social science must deal.*
All of these quotations make the interests or desires, which-
ever they happen to be called, individual qualities, and so place
them in the category of soul-stuff, with 'everything that that in-
evitably implies.
Compare now with the above quotations the following, also
brought together from various parts of his writings :
Of course this analysis of human interests is from the standpoint of the
observer, not of the actor. Real human beings are not such prigs as to start
by saying: "Go to now. I propose to secure health, wealth, sociability,
knowledge, beauty, and rightness."s ....
We have mainly to do with interests in the same sense in which the man
of affairs uses the term.'^
Interests in the sociological sense are not necessarily matters of attention
and choice They afe indicated spheres of activity which persons enter
into and occupy in the course of realizing their personality.' ....
All human experience is thus not merely a fabric of personal desires, but
those personal desires operate in a very large measure impersonally.^
I Ibid., p. 426. Small here is not thinking of a social "mode of motion" but
of an individual logically presocial, "mode of motion." Hence, despite the phrasing,
he does not take a descriptive but a causal point of view with reference to the desires.
The desires remain for him forces in the metaphysical sense.
* Ibid., p. 430. 3 Ibid., p. 480.
4 American Journal oj Sociology, Vol. IV, p. 381.
s General Sociology, p. 198. (And this, within three pages of the second quo-
tation in the list just given, that from General Sociology, p. 201.)
^ Ibid., p. 436. Illustrations are the railroad interest, the tobacco interest, the
sugar interest, the labor interest, the Cuban interest, the army interest, the riin.il
interest.
7 Ibid., p. 434. 8 Ibid., p. 539.
32 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
Now this second set of sentences just as surely tends to break
loose from the soul-stulT conception as the first set adhered to it.
Professor Small finds the reconciliation which carries him over
the gap in a distinction between objective and subjective interests.'
But even if he reaches a reconciliation for purposes of personal or
logical equilil)rium, for sociological purposes he does not want a
genuine reconciliation. He wants to make the subjective side of
these interests explain the phenomena on the objective side, which
are sometimes institutions and sometimes not. In doing it he
attempts to work out a calculus of desires. A few typical sentences
to this end now follow.
Here is, to start with, an excellent specimen of the billiard-
ball method of using interests:
In brief, either the social process in the large or that portion of the process
which is comprised within the limits of an individual life is a resultant of
reactions between the six interests, primarily in their permutations within the
individual, secondarily in their permutations between individuals, and always
in their varied reciprocity with the non -sentient environment.*
Here is an itahcized proposition as to the relation of interests
to everything else in society, the institutions, etc.:
At all events the appropriate order of procedure, from a sociological point
of approach, is analysis of social situations, in connection with analysis of
purposes of the persons involved in the situations, to the end of arriving at
generalizations of regularities and uniformities of sequence between types of
social situations and types of human volitions. ^
Here the purposes or volitions (i. e., the desires or interests)
are set aside in one series and after an independent study of them
they must be used to explain the "situations" in the other series.
Again he writes:
In order to have an adequate analysis of any social situation, past or present,
it is necessary to have an account of the precise content and proportions of the
several wants, both in typical persons of the society and in the group as a whole. ■♦
Here is a sentence in which the things to be explained are set
I General Sociology, pp. 431, 445 fl., 537. For the possibilities in the use of
subjective and objective see sec. iv of this chapter, on von Jhering.
» Ibid., p. 446. 3 Ibid., p. 649.
4 American Journal of Sociology, Vol. VIII, p. 206.
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 33
still more distinctly over against the desires which are to be used
to explain them:
The social problem involves the task of discovering the general laws of
interrelationship between the individual element in society, represented in
terms of desire by the product a b c d e }, and the institutional element, repre-
sented collectively by the product g h i j k I m.^
Here the first set of letters, a-f, represent the health-rightness
series, while the last set of letters, g-m, represent De Greef's
seven types of social phenomena, economic, genetic, artistic,
beliefs, moral, juridical, and political, which are used simply as
illustrative of the social facts that need to be explained. It is
worth noticing in passing that while normally Small should have as
many classes of phenomena as he has desires, each class corre-
sponding to one desire, he finds no difficulty in correlating his six
desires with De Greef's seven varieties of phenomena.
One more quotation will show him setting up a classification of
social facts to correspond with the six desires. He says:
We might plan our description of human association under the following
titles: (i) health associations; (2) wealth associations; (3) sociability asso-
ciations; (4) knowledge associations; (5) beauty associations; (6) rightness
associations.*
This, he continues, would be the "most direct way ideally"
to classify the phenomena. The process would be "to find out
what men as individuals want, not merely in detail, but in the
principles implied in details — then to discriminate the associa-
tions that cater to these several wants." He does not believe this
can be done today, but he is sure it can ultimately be done despite
" the tremendous difficulties of the undertaking." It will indeed be
tremendously difficult, considering that the facts arc to be forced
to correspond to a sixfold scheme set up at the beginning of the
investigation on a hodge-podge basis, instead of being classified
by direct study as they exist.
Professor Small has not stopped with these general statements,
but he has attempted to indicate how an "algebra" or "calculus"
of desires can be worked out to explain the facts of social life.
I Ibid., Vol. IV, p. 382. 2 ihid., Vol. VI, p. 493.
34 I III': I'ROCKSS OF GOVERNxMENT
This c altulus rests on ussumcd (|u;ilitativc and quantitative changes
in ihr six kinds of interests, or, better suid, on quantitative varia-
tions within each of the six interests. Beginning at the so-called
bottom of the social scale,' he finds the much-abused "horde"
to consist of "simply a mass of practically identical specimens of
a species, just like a shoal of fish or a herd of bufTaloes." This
is because the health interest is about the only interest that mani-
fests itself in the horde-men. "So long as the health interest
alone is in working force, tliere is no such fact present as a human
individual.'" As the sociologist surveys rising grades of society
he is supposed by this theory to see other varieties of interests
appear and develop themselves, here in one proportion, there in
anQther, and create all the multiform institutions we now have.
The theory of increments of desire is explicitly stated in many
places, for example thus:
We shall be very far from taking for granted the real individual with whom
sociology has to reckon if we picture either desires or wants as fixed in quantity
or quality. Human desires are not so many mathematical points. They
may rather be represented to our imagination as so many contiguous surfaces
stretching out from angles whose areas presently begin to overlap each other,
and whose sides extend indefinitely.^
Or again :
The problem of changing the facts is the problem of transforming the
interests (desires) that make the facts .... the social pedagogy and politics
and diplomacy .... which convert less into more social desires. "*
Also:
The ends which the groups pursue .... vary in two ways, which we
may call extension and content, s
Now by providing these desires with coefhcients and exponents
the social calculus is achieved. We are told for instance as a
• In discussing the classification of governments and types of society later in
this work the reason wUl appear why the horde is not necessarily a "bottom" form,
and how on the contrary it may be a highly perfected form of societj' as tested by
the equilibration of interests.
» General Sociology, p. 428. 4 Ibid., p. 442.
3 Ibid., p. 446. s Ibid., p. 541.
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 35
hypothetical case that Athens in the age of Pericles may have
included many individuals whose desires may be represented thus :
Desire = a^ + b^i + c^ + d^ + e«v + f vii.
A compound of individual desires might show "as to content"
the social end of Athens at the time as follows:
Social end = a"' + b'" + c" + d^i" + e»i + f W.
This is "a qualitative end which is the algebraic sum, so to
speak, or better a chemical compound [sic] of the desires cherished
by its individual members within the realm of the several great
interests."'
Now the practical outcome of this theory of Professor Small's
is to reduce the whole business of the use of soul-stuflf for social
interpretation to an absurdity; for the reason that although he
has been for a dozen years arguing it in print he has nowhere and
at no time, so far as I am aware, taken the slightest step to isolate
these desires or prove their existence apart from the social phenom-
ena they are intended to explain. His theory taps popular psy-
chology and the practical terminology of everyday speech for some
of the desires. It gets the rest by a cursory inspection of social
facts themselves. The popular terms have been created by the
identical methods, though in an even cruder use of it. They have
proved their utility only for the purposes of distinguishing between
Tom and Jack, and never for the purposes of explaining both
Tom and Jack in their actual content of social life.
Moreover the utter usclcssness of the theory for the sociologist's
purposes appears from the fact that Professor Small has never
accomplished anything by its aid. He has talked about it, sys-
tematized it, bridged over the gaps in it, and tunneled the barriers,
but he has not used it. When he wants to study social phenomena
directly he takes the active men or groups of men as he finds
them without reference to this soul-stulT. He says in words we
I Ibid., p. 543. Cf. ibid., p. 218, and also the article attempting a mathematical
statement of the working of the desires by one of Professor Small's seminar students
(Amy Hewes, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. V, p. 393). In the latter article the
quantities dealt with are stated thus: "The forces that produce motion in social
groups are the sum of the wants and desires of human beings."
36 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
have already (|uc)lc(l: "Wi- have mainly to do with interests in
the same sense in which the man of affairs uses the terms." But
this sense, as for example, the "railroad interest," indicates a
very complex piece of social structure. It indicates the social
fact, hut not the individual soul's desire. It cannot actually be
built up, i)iece after piece, out of those soul's desires; or, better
said, to avoid being too absolute on the point, it has not been so
built up either by Professor Small or by anyone else. They have
hitched some of the desires to it, just as one might hitch a demon
to a thunderstorm, but they have not pushed the analysis through
to satisfy anyone else.
What could Professor Small do, for example, that would be
really worth while toward showing the transition from extermina-
tion of enemies to the institution of slavery in early times ? He
could easily, of course, introduce a wealth desire (making the
prisoner work) in place of a health desire (self-protection by
slaughter). But how artificial such a procedure is! He would
then have to assume something as to the reasons for the appearance
of this new desire. Of course the observed conditions of the
transition would be at his service, and those conditions would be
certain relations of groups of primitive men. But how would he
gain by translating those conditions into terms of individual
desire and then making the desire explain the resulting institution,
over what he could accomplish by taking the group conditions
just as they stood for his whole explanation ? He would be
continuing to keep "soul-stuff" at work in his system, and if that
is considered a gain, well and good.' But for the rest he would
simply be making his interpretation vaguer and less exact than he
might make it without such desires.
Without further argument, it seems to be sufficiently clear that
this theory of social interpretation reduces itself to the identical
' I am perfectly well aware that the use of the word "gain" in this connection
may be brought up against me as an example of the very kind of interpretation to
which I am objecting. The point would be well taken except for one thing, which
is the heart of the whole matter. I am nowhere objecting to such speech forms
as convenient shorhand devices in their proper places. I am objecting exclusively
to the erection of such speech forms into pseudo-scientific systems of interpretation.
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 37
proposition, A=A, or in other words, to nothing at all except
verbiage.
If I had wished to criticize Professor Small's theory of social
causation on other than sociological grounds, the task would
have been much more quickly accomplished. There are no
desires nor interests apart from content. There are no nerves
which carry feelings inward without at the same time carrying
ideas (the terms are crude, but let that pass) ; there are none which
carry ideas without at the same time carrying feelings. You never
can make a feeling all alone explain an act — not even in the
simplest case imaginable. And the ideas bring the whole outside
world into the reckoning. Then what is the use of building up
a complicated calculus of feelings as though it did explain activity
in society ? To separate the feelings in a little bunch by themselves
with the hope of explaining anything by them is much like cut-
ting off one's arms at the shoulders for the sake of using them as
weapons against an enemy. One cannot throw them far nor strike
hard with them.
The trapdoor that lets the sociologist through into this pit is
to be found at the spot where the complicated interest groups,
differing in individual adherents as we actually find them in
society, intercept one another. Tom, the miser, and Jack, the
spendthrift, go into partnership, and therefore the partnership
is an outside thing caused by miserliness in one and extravagance
in the other, and the metaphysics begins. As a matter of fact,
Tom is a member of a lot of interest groups, and so also is Jack.
In each of these groups they reflect the social world around them
in some of its phases. In their partnerships some of the groups
to which each belongs cross and interlace. How this is and what
its meaning, will be discussed in detail later in the book.
Section III. Spencer
Herbert Spencer^ started his philosophic career with a proposi-
tion that he considered fundamental as to the relations between
I In criticizing Spencer's theory of feelings as the forces of society, I hope I
shall not be understood as meaning to criticize his work as a whole. I have only
38 rHK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
man and man in society: "Every man has freedom to do all that
he wills provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other
man.'" He came out at the end of his life at exactly the same
place. This with the wording a little changed is the central
thought of thi' Principles of Ethics.
He started life holding that his desires were one thing and
that what he desired was another thing. He saw his desires " there"
on one side, and the unachieved satisfactions "there" on the other
side. He came out at the end of his life at exactly the same place.
Each man has certain desires, given or acquired. If you can get
the right mixture of desires inserted in these men you will get a
perfect society — so, and not otherwise.
He started life believing that "the ultimate man will be one
whose private requirements coincide with public ones. He will
be that manner of man who spontaneously fulfilling his own nature
incidentally performs this function of a social unit; and yet is
only enabled so to fulfil his own nature by all others doing the
like." He came out at the end of his life in exactly the same place,
choosing these words from Social Statics for the closing sentences
of the third volume of the Sociology.
What this means is that Spencer did not learn to know the
too much admiration of it in many of its phases, and I recognize that many a socio-
logical reputation has been made with crumbs from his pages. It may seem that
when I discard his psychology, his ethics, and his theory of the relation of the
individual to the state, I discard everything of importance. On the contrary, the
massive work he has achieved with so poor a mechanism marks the way most use-
fully for further work with a better mechanism.
I wish to make now, just as I have already made in criticizing Small, a some-
what similar avowal with regard to the other writers whose methods of social inter-
pretation I am about to analyze in detail and reject. I can in almost even,' case
say that the men I criticize have been helpful to me vastly out of proportion to the
evil in their works which I feel it necessary to point out as a means of safeguarding
myself against misunderstanding of the method of interpretation I shall later advo-
cate.
As between Small and Spencer it may be remarked that Spencer is clear and
precise as to what he means, where Small is often confused and diffuse. But
Small faces much troublesome social material which Spencer simply shuts his eyes
to, and his ver\' honesty in facing it adds to the appearance of confusion.
I Social Sialics (.\mer. ed.,'^1865), chap, vi, sec. i, p. 121.
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 39
relation of the individual to society from his life-long studv of
social facts. He imported his view~6f this relationship into his
philosophy at the start and he built the whole philosophy up
around it without even an attempt to test it as such. If the indi-
vidual's desire and his satisfaction (or, better said, in place of his
satisfaction his method of satisfying his desires, this method being
the typically social act) are not two separate things capable of
reciprocal action on one another, then Spencer's interpretation
of social life stands not merely as false, but as a bald, assumption,
without any effort to prove it.
I will indicate his views by quotation in detail, show some of
the consequences that flow from them in the construction of his
system, and finally point out more precisely the weak spots,
keeping always, I hope, to social facts as the test.
As simple a statement as any can be found in The Study of
Sociology. In talking of rational legislation he tells us that such
legislation "must recognize as a datum the direct connection of
action with feeling." He admits there are some "automatic actions
which take place without feelings" and at the other extreme some
feelings "so intense that they impede or arrest action." These
can be disregarded as insignificant, and so, speaking generally, we
can say that "action and feeling vary together in their amounts.'"
As to the importance of these exceptions I shall have some-
thing more to say later. Here I am interested in noting that
Spencer takes his position in opposition to the views of those people
who believe that "knowledge is the moving agent in conduct."
He is interested in proving that if one increases a person's knowledge
it will not influence his conduct, but that if one operates on that
person's feelings, it will influence his conduct. He does not say
that knowledge can be found that is not based on feelings. But
he treats them for all practical purposes as separate. A few
pages farther on, he gives some examples of the application of this
principle in legislation. For instance, the English people are
improvident. That is because for ages they have been disciplined
in improvidence. Various factors have built up this trait of
' The Study of Sociology, p. 358.
40 rilK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
charaiUr in lluin. Once huill up it is a fixed fact. You can
explain their actions by referring to this trait of character. You
can exj)lain a trait of character by various other things, but the
trait is for all sociological purposes as fixed and definite a thing
as, say, a i)oor law, or a house, or a shotgun, or a tavern. Spencer
does not state his position as crudely as this, but the phrasing is
not unfair to him.
What it comes to in the case of the English he is describing is
this: that those Englishmen select out of all the ways of living
oi)en to them certain ways that land them in the poorhouse, when
if they were not in their soul of souls "improvident" they would
even now select out of their opportunities other ways of liNnng
which would keep them comfortable in their old age. And if you
could only change those "feelings" of theirs, they would be able to
get, even under the same conditions of life and with the same
industrial opportunities, ever so much more out of life. He does
not either here or anywhere else tell us that any desired altera-
tion of the feelings whatever is possible, the type of society being
fixed. He insists, rather, that the change in society and the
change in feelings must go along hand in hand. But nevertheless
they are separate things, and if the feelings can be pushed forward
a little here and there, the actions will change with them in the
desired direction. Hence their progress will not be simply the
direct outcome of all their ways of acting as such but it will be
engineered through specific selected feelings.
Farther along in this same chapter Spencer takes up instances
in which feelings as such are selected by the survival of the fit.^
Also he argues that there are specific thoughts as well as specific
feelings which are built up in the individuals and which control
their progress.
How absurd [he says] is the supposition that there can be a rational inter-
pretation of men's combined actions without a previous interpretation of those
thoughts and feelings by which their individual actions are prompted.^ ....
Always the power which initiates a change is feeling separate or aggregated,
guided to its ends by intellect How then can there be a true account
of social action without a true account of those thoughts and sentiments ?^
I The Study of Sociology, p. 375. a Ibid., p. 382. 3 Ibid.
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 41
Let us trace Spencer's theory of the action of the individual
in and upon society through the volumes of his Synthetic Philosophy,
allowing the statement to be for the most part in his own words.
In the First Principles we are shown the individual's mind in
process of manufacture by the outer world.
The modes of consciousness called pressure, motion, sound, light, heat,
are effects produced in us by agencies which, as otherwise expended, crush,
or fracture pieces of matter, generate vibrations.' .... Hence if we regard
the changes of relative position, of aggregation, or of chemical state, thus
arising, as being transformed manifestations of the agencies from which they
arise, so must we regard the sensations which such agencies produce in us
as new forms of the forces producing them.* .... Besides the correlation
and equivalence between external physical forces, and the mental forces gener-
ated by them in us under the form of sensations, there is a correlation and
equivalence between sensations and those physical forces which, in the shape
of bodily actions, result from them."^ ....
Next as to thoughts and as to those feelings which arise from
"internal stimuli":
The forces called vital, which we have seen to be the correlates of the
forces called physical, are the immediate sources of these thoughts and feelings,
and are expended in producing them.*
These feelings and the ideas that he builds out of them become
for Spencer definite "things," just as a sun, a crystal, or a tadpole
in the physical world. They are psychical, it is true, and how
the physical things turn themselves into psychical things it is
"impossible to fathom." But we know that they do, and we
have just got to go ahead with them, he holds, on that basis.
The following passage, although it is taken somewhat out of order,
will show fairly well this concrete \iew of mental states.
The limit toward which emotional modification perpetually tends, and
to which it must approach indefinitely near (though it can absolutely reach
it only in infinite time), is a combination of desires that correspond to all the
different orders of activity which the circiunstances of life call for — desires
severally proportionate m strength to the needs for these orders of activity,
and severally satisfied by these orders of activity. In what we distinguish as
acquired habits, and in the moral differences of races and nations produced by
» First Principles, sec. 71.
" Ibid. 3 Ibid. * Ibid.
43 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
h;il)it.s that arc- maintained through successive generations, we have countless
illustrations of this progressive adaptation, which can cease only with the
establishment of a complete equilibrium between constitution and conditions.'
In the Biology there is nothing that need detain us. One
comment may however be made. In his later years Spencer
seems to have felt that he had not been entirely fair in his treat-
ment of life. He seems to have felt that perhaps he had not given
the animal or vegetable organism sufficient recognition as a pecul-
iarly individualized "center from which a differentiated division
of the original force is again diffused." So in the last edition of
his Biology, revised after his system as it stands had been com-
pleted, he interpolated a chapter (Part I, chap, vi, a), in which
he said that "that which gives substance to our idea of Life is
a certain unspecified principle of activity,"^ and that "hfe in its
essence cannot be conceived in physico-chemical terms. "^ In
this he only gave to life a little of that concreteness which from
the start he had naively given to feeling, but his extra chapter
created for a time a great stir among his followers, many of whom
were inclined to believe that in this chapter he had withdrawn
the problem of the origin of life from the evolutionary mold in
which his entire philosophy is cast, and had permitted at this one
point the unknowable to break through into the knowable.
Coming now to the Psychology^ we are to learn how- the "multi-
tudinous, diverse forms of feeling have been evolved from a primi-
tive, simple sensibility."'* Also how ideas are built up out of feel-
ings. " The relational element of mind is the intellectual element."^
The Spencerian mechanism for this is too well known to need
description, and besides it is aside from our purpose.
He tells us that "no kind of feelings, sensational or emotional,
can be wholly freed from the intellectual element."^ But this
does not mean for him any unity of the sensational-intellectual
process. Feelings are one kind of "thing," and ideas are another
I First Principles, sec. 174.
» Biology, revised and enlarged edition, 1898, p. 114.
3 Ibid., p. 120. s Ibid., sec. 209.
4 Psychology, sec. 60. 6 7Jj^_
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 43
kind of "thing" superimposed on the feelings. "Sensations are
primary indecomposable states of consciousness ; while perceptions
are secondary decomposable states consisting of changes from one
primary state to another.'"
A large part of these feeling "things" are brought by the
individual human being bodily — I use the word advisedly — into the
world at his birth. "The doctrine that all the desires, all the
sentiments, are generated by the experiences of the individual is
so glaringly at variance with the facts that I cannot but wonder
how anyone should ever have entertained it."^
These inborn feelings, modified and developed by the conditions
of life, are the things, he holds, which the individual uses to make
society. They make his acts, and his acts worked together into
a tangle with other people's acts are society.
It is manifest that the ability of men to co-operate in any degree as members
of a society presupposes certain intellectual faculties and certain emotions.
It is manifest that the efficiency of their co-operation will, other things being
equal, be determined by the amounts or proportions in which they possess these
required mental powers. It is also manifest that by continuing to co-operate
under the conditions furnished by any social state the amounts and proportions
of these mental powers may be modified, and some modified form of co-opera-
tion may hence result; which again reacting on the nature is itself again reacted
upon. Hence in preparation for the study of social evolution there have to
be dealt with various questions representing the faculties it brings into play,
and representing the modes in which these are developed during continued
social Hfe."3
Now these "manifests" and "hences" are not manifest at
all, except for the first one of them, and that only if understood as
indicating a psychical process, not a soul-content. But of that
more later. Notice in passing the concrete character of these
powers or faculties in the individual, the quantitative increase of
them as "things," and the engineering of society by or through
them.
It is when Spencer reaches this stage in his psychology that
he classifies cognitions on the one side and feelings on the other,
each into four groups, with the same group names in each series:
' Ibid., sec. 211. ^ Ibid., sec. 216. 3 Ibid., sec. 477.
44 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
prescntativc, prcscntative-reprcsentative, representative, and re-
representative.' One can recall what all this means sufficiently
well by the bare statement that a re-representative feeling would
be such a feeling as the "love of property" as distinct from the
love of or desire for j)articular pieces of property. This is for
him not at all love of property "in the abstract," but very con-
cretely. It is a feeling thing that he means.
Each one of these faculties or powers or feeling things or
whatever they arc — excepting, of course, those that have been
already evolved when man first is man — has been built up with
the progress of civilization. He sets forth that men living in
social life and coming up through history gradually add to their
facultative equipment such things as foresight, modifiability of
belief, abstract conceptions, conceptions of property, of cause, of
uniformity, ideas of measure, definiteness of thought, exactness,
consciousness of truth, skepticism, and criticism, and finally
imagination, first reminiscent and then constructive.^
Intellectual evolution as it goes on in the human race along with social
evolution, of which it is at once a cause and a consequence, is thus, under all
its aspects, a progress in representativeness of thought. ^
As always, however, this last statement must be taken to mean not
merely a process of experience, but the evolutionary creation of a
faculty or power which is a thing which encounters, pushes, and
interacts with, other world-things.
Only as social progress brings more numerous and more heterogeneous
experiences can general ideas be evolved out of special ideas, and the faculty
of thinking them acquired. *
I call attention here to his remark in this connection that in
later stages of social evolution "there is an increasing originality
which tells at once on the individual arts, on science, and on litera-
ture;" and ask whether anyone can name an invention today that
can be compared for boldness and power with early man's inven-
tion of fire-using, field-tilling, or animal-domestication, or that
can be compared with the many social inventions of the bees,
» Psychology, sec. 480. 3 Ibid., sec. 493.
* Ibid., Part IX, chap. iii. 4 Ibid., sec. 493.
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 45
which have produced their complex hive-life. These things are com-
parable generically. It will be a bold man who says that our
modern inventive genius often equals them. I wish to refer also
to Spencer's illustration in this connection of the mental equip-
ment of modern woman, which he compares in many ways with
that of primitive man. This illustration seems to me a most
beautiful disproof of his theory. Anyone who chooses to read the
passage can see that on inspection and enjoy it, especially if his
eye falls also on the troubled reference that is somewhere made
to George Eliot and her work.
Making express psychological preparation for his Sociology,
Spencer next discusses sociahty. Sociality is the product of
evolution, but it is only possible through a specific mental accom-
paniment— a feeling content, which it "imphes and cultivates;"
a feehng which "can begin only through some slight variation,"
and is "maintained and increased by the survival of the fittest."^
This feeling which lies at the foundation of society is sympathy.
Sympathy can develop only in proportion as there is power of
representation.^ Three causes of sympathy can be traced in
three sets of relations: (i) the relation between the members of a
species; (2) between male and female; (3) between parents and
offspring. Sympathy accomplishes especially great work in human
society because there we find all the three causes just mentioned,
"along with the coessential condition, elevated intelligence. "^
"No great social advance has been possible without an increase
in this feeling.""*
Following these propositions Spencer gives a page or two
of illustrations^ of the working of sympathy in society. I challenge
anyone to read these and point out from them where Spencer finds
any "sympathy" as a feeling thing which is not itself merely his
own bald inference from the external facts this sympathy is sup-
posed to explain. Watch him as he describes a primitive custom,
which when found nowadays is condemned as cruel and "unsym-
pathetic." Watch him as he infers from it that the primitive
1 Ibid., sec. 504. 3 Ibid., sec. 509. s Ibid., sees. 509 fif.
2 Ibid., sec. 507. 4 Ibid., sec. 510.
46 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
lH-()l)k' whose custom it was were weak in sympathy. See him
here guilty of as llagrant a "bias" as ever he assailed in his
Study oj Sociology. We may call it, if we please, in parallel to his
other forms of bias, the "civilization bias" — it takes the content
of feelings as they arc found today and sets them up as the stand-
ards of feelings for all races and all times.
On the spot he tangles himself badly in his explanations.
/ After showing how weak were the sympathies "among the lower
'', races," he starts to trace the evolution of greater sympathy. This
goes beautifully while he is portraying the good deeds of our own
times. But when he turns to the other side of the picture, he fmds
that he has got to account for just the reverse condition of affairs —
the cruelty of today — and he has only one way to do it, namely, by
deming modern times the faculty of sympathy. Our human
institutions of today are due to the sympathy we have. Our
inhuman institutions are due to the sympathy we lack. But are
not these identical statements, from the given point of view, true
also of the most primitive clan, which is bloodthirsty in war, but
never lets its humblest member suffer from hunger while a luckier
mouth is filled ? And if so, how can sympathy as such be relied on
to explain anything at all ?
He tells us, however, that
the relatively slowdevelopmentof sympathy during civilization, notwithstanding
the high degree of sociality and the favorable domestic relations (i.e., monogamy),
has been in a considerable degree due to the slow development of representative
power. '
It is almost cruel here to refer back to his assertion about the
modern increase in originality, quoted a few pages back, but the
inconsistency is too vital to be overlooked. Another hindrance
he notes is that we are still a "predatory race," which, apparently,
we could not exactly cease to be, but at least take a step toward
ceasing, any day we wished, merely by taking an injection of
Dr. Spencer's choice extract of sympathy.
Now Spencer finds the solution of this unpleasant conflict
between theory and fact, in which sympathy as a "thing" must
' Psychology, sec. 509
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 47
explain society, and yet in every phase of society both is and is
not at the same time, by striking a compromise between different
influences at work on human character, the outcome of which is
"a speciahzation of the sympathies." We are sympathetic here
and unsympathetic there, all at the same time, and yet sympathy
itself is a thing, a real thing, indeed the most real thing for inter-
pretative purposes.
Fellow feeling has been continually repressed in those directions where
social safety has involved the disregard of it; while it has been allowed to grow
in those directions where it has either positively conduced to the welfare of
the society or has not hindered it.'
This is perfectly true — to tolerate the use of such phrasing for
the moment — but it is also true that Spencer here clearly abandons
sympathy in any way in which it is worth having as an aid to the
interpretation of society. He has thrown it aside, but does not
know it.
We might follow him as he builds up first of all egoistic senti-
ments and fits them on to the social facts for which he needs them,
according to the lights of his theory; then ego-altruistic feelings,
and then altruistic feelings. But what is the use ? The defect is
the same throughout. They are little puppets made by hand;
little spooks miraculously appearing. They are all of them sur-
viving traces of the animism which Spencer himself studied so
carefully among primitive men, and so scornfully condemned as
violating all reason.
We pass next to the Sociology. The character of the units
(persons) and the conditions under which they exist (the environ-
ment) are the primary factors as primarily divided.^ With the
latter, the external factors, we need not concern ourselves.^ They,
I Ibid., sec. 510. * Sociology, sec. 6.
3 As for these external factors wc may note in passing the " superorganic en-
vironment," which determines the governmental organization of society, while in-
organic and organic environments determine mainly the industrial organization
(Sociology, sec. 11). This distinction is dogmatic and harmful to later constructive
work. The "secondary environment" (sec. 12) also deserves a reference because
it is so typical of Spencer's whole method of interpretation to divorce the tool
from the hand of the man who uses it — a divorce fatal to any clear interpretation
of social activity.
48 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
of course, hiive helped to create the internal factors, the people,
and they arc "there," outside, all the time pressing against the
internal factors and interacting with them. Of the internal factors,
i. c., the individual man, we must take account, in addition to his
physique, of his emotional and intellectual traits.' We are also
given an opportunity for that most interesting study, "the effect
of the whole on the parts, and of the parts on the whole"* — a
naive investigation which would do credit to primitive man, which
indeed by its very announcement makes primitive man a living
reality to us.
As to early man physically the most that Spencer is able to say
of him, in contrast with the man of today, is that "some traits of
brutality and inferiority exhibited in certain of these ancient varie-
ties, have either disappeared or now occur only as unusual varia-
tions."^
The chapters'* which deal with primitive man, emotional and
intellectual, indicate how much and how little can be done with
these feeling and compound feeling, or idea, factors. The quota-
tion from the Psychology in the first section of the first of these
chapters^ could be accepted in a general way if it were made to
refer exclusively to the forms of the psychic process through which
the social life is achieved. But Spencer does not mean it in this
way. Each item that he mentions is a mass of feeling, and it is
always masses of feeling he has in mind. One or two instances
of his interpretation will bear fruit for our critical purpose, as
fully as if we took up every instance in turn. Take for instance
' Sociology, sec. 7. 3 Ibid., sec. 22.
> Ihid., sec. 10. 4 Ibid., Part I, chaps, vi, vii.
5 Compare also the opening paragraph of sec. 52, which sets up the "truth that
the laws of thought are everywhere the same; and that, given the data as known to
him, the primitive man's inference is the reasonable inference;" which would be a
highly useful principle if he adhered to it and did not make his whole interpretation
rest on an evolution of "faculties," including the faculty of reasoning, or getting
reasonable conclusions. Practically he is always insisting that one must get more
"reason" or more mental what not in order to move society upward. Here his
words are in flat contradiction to his practice. This will not be considered a quibble
on my part, after I have pointed out the practical difficulties he gets into through
the use of his method.
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 49
his quotation from Burton's description of the East African.'
Compare the savage traits set forth with those of the people of our
present society. Can they not be easily matched, either separately
or in groups ? Indeed if the fairer comparison is made, a com-
parison, namely, between this description and some description,
similar in character, of the traits of any civilized people, the deci-
sion would be sharper still against Spencer's view. Such soul
qualities as he mentions could only be useful for social interpreta-
tion if they could be found, identified exactly, and verified indepen-
dently. But when they are both inexact and knowable to us only
from the actions which are supposed to result from them, they are
utterly useless, and, as will appear later, highly harmful. Spencer's
quotation from Wallace about savage respect for law^ may be
compared with the one just mentioned for further illustration as to
the feelings of the primitives.
I cannot resist, however, referring to one other passage in this
connection, that, namely, setting forth instances of "credulity" —
the Indian choosing his totem, the negro choosing a god for the
moment, the Veddah thinking his arrow goes wrong because his
deity is not propitiated.
We must regard [he says] the impHed convictions as normal accompani-
ments of a mental state in which the organization of experiences has not gone
far enough to evolve the idea of causation. ^
If these savages do not have the idea of causation, I cannot con-
ceive what causation means. They have not Spencer's idea of
causation, it is true, but perhaps, all things considered, their own
idea is more useful to them under their own circumstances of life
than Spencer's would be, and if so it is to that extent more true.
We have our world strung together differently nowadays and the
great social change (mind, I do not say result) is manifest; but
as for the "faculties," there is at any rate nothing in the facts as
given to prove any difference.
Spencer continues with his well-known chapters on primitive
ideas which make up the great bulk of his Data of Sociology. Per-
haps the best test in his whole system is to take these "data" and
I Sociology, sec. 33. = Ibid., sec. 36. 3 Ibid., sec. 44.
50 rilK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
api)ly thcin lo the rest of liis sociology with a view to seeing what
can be done with them in interpreting the social phenomena.
It is hard lo keep any respect for the man when one experiments
in this direction. It is so clear that these "data" or "ideas" or
what not are forms of social action, just as much as any of the
social structures he later describes; that the "ideas" do not have
an indej)endent life which creates social activity outside of them,
but that rather all social life is stated in terms of "ideas" by the
actors, and that all ideas have reference to nothing else except
social life, even such ideas as the First Principles, even the "syn-
thetic philosophy," even the "unknowable."
I will merely quote one more well-known passage before leaving
the Sociology.
While the conduct of the primitive man is in part determined by the feelings
with which he regards men around him ; it is in part determined by the feelings
with which he regards men who have passed away. From these tivo sets of
feehngs, result two all-important sets of social factors. \\Tiile the fear of the
living becomes the root of the pohtical control, the fear of the dead becomes
the root of the religious control.'
If it be possible to find any factors more superficial than these
out of which to erect a system of social interpretation, I cannot
conceive what they are. This "fear of the living" and this "fear
of the dead" alike are crude ways of stating certain very important
social facts, certain hard facts of everyday existence. Such
crudities of statement form poor stuff for "causes" in sociology.
And yet Spencer says:
Setting out with social units as thus conditioned, as thus constituted physic-
ally, emotionally, and intellectually, and as thus possessed of certain early
acquired notions and correlative feelings, the science of sociology has to give
an account of all the phenomena that result from their combined actions.*
Now what of the Ethics? I confess I have had few harder
problems than to find a way to place Spencer's Ethics in the proper
relation to his sociology. And the only way I have been able to
achieve this necessary task has been by making the whole world of
social activity as it presents itself to me distort itself into con-
I Sociology, sec. 209. * Ibid., sec. 210.
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 51
formity with Spencer's separation of his vivid "want" from his
far-away "thing wanted" — a separation which he never got over
all his life long. Even then much difl&culty remains.
In the Ethics Spencer seems to distrust fundamentally the
adequacy of the feelings as engineers of the social process. Upon
the naive feelings he superimposes a still more naive control of the
feelings. His Ethics implies that we can set up a standard for
society, and that we can doctor the feelings of the individuals so
as to realize this standard in society.
These implications must be stated more fully. They amount
to something like this: We, the individuals, made up of feeling
things (plus some complex idea things) and living in the midst
of a lot of outside things (other people included), can set up a
standard of what we all ought to be, either with reference to the
world of outside things made over and controlled the way we should
ultimately like to have it, pure pleasure existing unalloyed —
absolute ethics; or with reference to the world of outside things
patched up in the best manner available for our own day — relative
ethics. By manipulating the feelings of the individuals — who may
be regarded as conceivably all alike for ethical purposes — we can
arrive at the relative standard, and work on toward the absolute.
This may be done, perhaps, by some social wisdom which plays
on the feelings of the individuals and continually forces them all
together upward; perhaps, by presenting the truth to the indi-
vidual in Spencer's Principles of Ethics, or in some other fit form,
the individual then seeing the desirability of starting out to make
himself over on such lines;' or perhaps, on the general principle
that morals guide society and when you get morals understood
properly they will guide it correctly. The alternatives are vague
enough and mean httle,but they indicate possible points of approach.
The following quotations bear on the technique of the Ethics:
" Only by gradual remolding of human nature into fitness for the
social state can either the private life or the public life of each man
be made what it should be."^
~^ Cf. in Ethics, Vol. I, p. 561, the suggestion of "moderation in self-criticism."
' Ethics, sec. 244.
52 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
SjKiiking of Ihc "capacity for modification which makes
possible an approximately complete adjustment of the nature to
the life which has to be led,'" he tells us we can get a good idea of
it from the contrast between people who torment animals and people
who cannot be induced even to look on such tortures — an illus-
tration which may do credit to his heart, but which shows a com-
plete forgetfulness of the history of the movement toward humanity
in the treatment of animals, and an ignorance of the true meaning
of that "specialization of sympathies" which was set forth in
earlier quotations.
Happiness, which is itself a kind of feeling, is inevitably "the
ultimate moral aim."^ It is also the thing which ought to control
and guide the other feelings. "The essential trait in moral con-
sciousness is the control of some feeling or feelings by some other
feeling or feelings. "^ Duty is an unpleasant kind of feeling that
"will diminish as fast as moralization increases."'*
Conduct in its highest form will take as guides innate perceptions of right,
duly enlightened and made precise by analytical intelligence; while conscious
that these guides are proximately supreme solely because they lead to the ulti-
mately supreme end, happiness, special and general. "s
So much for Spencer's system of interpreting social life by
individual feelings.
Now what of the results that flow from it in the course of his
own work ? In the first place there are the inconsistencies which
have been mentioned from time to time above. If feelings are
to be specialized to fit each and every case in which they operate,
each bit of specialization is a fresh bit of inconsistency in the
theory. If the "amounts and proportions" of the feelings must
be made to vary so as to explain each and every social institution and
social change, then there is no reason whatever for pausing and
calling the feelings the "causes." We may for all practical pur-
poses ignore them.
Another difficulty that the feeling theory leads to is that if the
• Ethics, sec. 244. *Ibid., p. 127.
' Ibid., Vol. I, p. 46. 5 Ibid., pp. 172, 173.
3 Ibid., p. 113.
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 53
individual "as made" is the unit, then it is natural to conclude,
by the use of pure reason, re-representatively or otherwise, that
all individuals may ultimately be made alike in their feelings so
far as these operate on society, or rather on their own social
activities. This opens the way for a whole range of individualistic
speculation, which has the least possible relationship to inductive ;
science. Indeed this whole proposition that one standard can I
be set up for all men, and that all men can conceivably be brought !
up to it (or, alternatively, all men of any given society), however '
in accord it is with religious codes, is in sharp conflict with the
observations of every unbiased pair of human eyes that ever looked
out on the world. It conflicts with the experience of the very
religions that most earnestly insist on it. It conflicts even more
with other phenomena of social activity. Men differentiate them-
selves in all kinds of groups all the time, each with its own standard.
That is the fact. Even the Spencerian individuahsts themselves
are forever asserting the right to disport themselves along the lines
of their passing feelings, not the duty of evolving toward the
Spencerian ethical ideal. Even the Spencerian ethical ideal,
quoted in the opening paragraph of this section, insists on the
greatest possible amount of this individually defined liberty. The
inconsistency is self-evident. The Spencerian may say that the
propositions as I have put them above are just the reverse of
what they ought to be properly to represent Spencer's views.
Granted, and yet the incohsistency will be as great as ever. In
other words, for all his emphasis of the external environment,
Spencer, in his specific interpretations, persists in regarding indi-
viduals as individuals per se, not as individual factors or forms
in the particular social institutions in which they actually find
themselves, in which they always have found themselves, and in
which, so far as any student of facts has a right to say, they always
will find themselves.
A third difficulty that flows from Spencer's theory of feelings
is that which involves the "natural." It is best exemplified in
his views of government and government functions. His follow-
ers show the difficulty in their positions. They can get anywhere
54 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
in llu- whole range of social speculation by taking a good running
start from Spcncerian feelings. They can reach socialism or
anarchy. They can reach anything they want to reach. The
"natural" is not what socially is, but what conforms to the "natu-
ral" feelings, as the individual upholder of the "natural" insists
they must work out.
All this is not science. It is an eighteenth-century distillation
of a seventeenth-century deity, curiously garbing itself in a nine-
teenth-century "knowable" force. Straight out of these Spcn-
cerian feelings come those "innate perceptions of right," which
suddenly popped up in oncj of the passages from the Ethics quoted
above.
The true Spcncerian has plenty of other troubles besides these.
But these wdll do for our needs.
And now two more points. The first will show what Spencer
leaves out of his social world. The second will show what poor
little service the feelings render him, and how much better that
service can be rendered without them.
Turn back to the early quotations from the Study of Sociology,
in which Spencer put the feelings in quantitative relation to action,
but passed over as indifferent the whole range of "automatic"
action, as something that could be disregarded without any harm
in social interpretation. The unhappy truth for him is that the
greater part of our social life is carried on in just this discarded
realm. Our feelings, after the Spcncerian mode, are seen pushing
a little here, pulling a little there, and playing around some features
of life. They make a fuss over big things and have free scope with
little things, but they do not even in superficial appearance directly
secure results with the big things, and in the range of intermediate
activities which make up the bulk of social life they hardly appear
at all.
We are living in days of great popular agitation over our forms
of government. "Feelings" are red hot. They break in some
waves over the Supreme Court, and in others over the Senate.
They reach in little waves our city councils and city pohce forces.
They pound away in a good many other places. But what are
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 55
our feelings doing with the great structural features of our American
constitution ? Just nothing. The constitution — I am not talking
of the written document, nor of constitutional conventions, but
of the actual working everyday organization of our political
society — goes hammering along in its great features undisturbed
and uninfluenced, unprodded by specific Spencerian feelings
of any kind. Does anybody want the referendum ? All right,
let him have it. The change would not be much. Or govern-
ment ownership of railroads? We can make a terrific noise
about it, and shake our feelings till our hair stands straight up,
but the innovation, if established, would be but a trifle compared
with the steady-moving, "automatic" functions of our government,
which Spencer deems negligible so far as his theory of feelings
goes. If all this process of government were some "external"
thing waiting to be pushed by feelings, or now and then pushing
feelings in return, that would be one thing. But such is not the case.
It is "internal," it is human, as much as anything we know of is
internal and human. And the moment it is taken into the reckon-
ing, good-by forever to the Spencerian interpretation.
The case would be stronger still if I took up other and wider
phases of our social life, which are touched very little by the
emotional play as compared with government. But I will omit
that, only to approach such phenomena immediately in a different
way.
What service do the feelings render Spencer in his social
interpretation ? Well, they strive to hold together various forms
of activity into groups. They are meant to make all the activities
of each individual stick together with the activities of the other
individuals in his particular tribe, state, or society. The feelings
raised to the higher powers, and finally to the re-representative
stage, are supposed to collect together many forms of activity, and
make them cohere. They actually give this interpretative help in
a feeble way. They keep the Spencerian social world from being
a house of cards, but they fjuickly break in pieces when they are
used, and then we have to shut our eyes and open the throttle. We
have to "specialize the feelings." It is all over.
56 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
Is it the processes of mentality that Spencer places at the
foundation of society ? Well and good. But then these processes
must be filled with a social content. They must be worked up
socially all the time. But is it a content of individual mental states ?
Then they never can be worked up. The unfortunate manipulator
shoots off into the infmite at every step.
Just as Spencer flew to "feelings" to get rid of the "knowledge-
rules" theory,' so we must fly to action — purely positive — to get
rid of the abuses of the "feeling" theory.
The interpretation that will hold scientifically will ignore these
feelings. It will watch the social situations build themselves
up, one unfolding itself out of the other. It will look to the future
only through these unfolding situations. It will not put a grain-
spook in the wheat-field, nor a brain-spook in the class war or the
reform of government or the social movement. It will see every
bit of social activity as psychically functioned, and it will see
nothing concretely psychical that is independent of society and yet
dominating it. It will calmly, "positively," in the Comtean
sense, grasp social facts just for what they are, study them for
what they are, analyze and synthesize them for what they are,
and leave all the mental "spooks" for men and women so hard
pressed with the actual doing of things that they need convenient
catchwords and symbols to save them the trouble of pushing their
thinking back into a region that would inevitably send forth great
disturbance for the day's work they have in hand.
Section IV. Von Jhering
It is a pleasure to pass from the confusions of Small and the
crudities of Spencer to the patiently powerful work of Rudolph
von Jhering.^ If there is any man who has set out with equal
ability, equal equipment, and equal scientific determination to
face without flinching every difficulty in this field, I have not
I The Study of Sociology, pp. 365, 366.
» The quotations are from Der Zweck im Recht, 3d ed., Vol. I, 1893; Vol. II,
1898; which will be referred to as Zweck; and from Geist des romischen Rechts auf
den verschkdenen Stufen seiner Entwicklung," Theil I, 5th ed., Theile II and III,
4th ed., which will be referred to as Geist.
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 57
come across his work. Der Zweck im Recht must be reckoned
with, page for page, by everyone who seeks to understand the
process of government and the function of law in social life. And-
yet with all admiration for the work of this master I cannot but
think that the psychological system he has elaborated to function
the individual in society has achieved, not a success or even a
partial success, but a complete collapse.
With the great majority of his interpretations of laws, moral
rules, and institutions, such as are found especially in the second
volume of Der Zweck im Recht and in The Evolution of the Aryan,
I feel so substantial a sympathy that I may say my only wish is
to go somewhat farther, abandoning the personified society and
the race character,' which he still retains, and making the inter-
pretation entirely in terms of social groups.
With his psychology, his technique of "Zwecke," objective
and subjective, used to connect the individual man with the social
processes in which he participates, it is a very different matter.
It is solely with this phase of his theory that the present section
deals. I must leave it to the second part of this work to show how
society can be investigated without such a technique. Here I
wish to show his own downfall, and the inherent impossibility of
solving the problem he set himself.
Jhering first came to close quarters with the psychological
problems of the origin and meaning of law at the close of his Geist
des romischen Rechts, or rather at the close of that portion of this
work which was all he ever wrote. He had been interpreting
broadly in terms of national spirit and folk psychology. Now
he declared himself for a theory of interest or utility ("Interesse,"
"Nutzen"), the two words not being well distinguished, but the
one being used with a somewhat more subjective, the other with
a somewhat more objective, reference.
He set himself in opposition on the one hand to theories which
made laws take their origin in any kind of absolute will power,
and on the other hand to theories which placed the origin in mere
might. It was the usefulness of the law, he said, that counted.
I See infra, Part II, chap. ix.
58 THK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
StripjR'd of terminology and dispulation, this came lo saying that
you cannot get law out of simple head work, and you cannot get
it out of mere i)reponderance of force; law must always be goofi
for something to the society which has it, and that quality of being
good for something is the very essence of it.'
The formal element of law he placed, at this time, in the legal
protection by right of action ("Klage," "Rechtsschutz"); the
substantial element in "Nutzen," "Vortheil," "Gewinn," "Sich-
erhcit des Gcniisses." He defined laws as legally protected
interests,* and said that they served "den Intercsscn, Bcdiirfnis-
sen, Zweckcn des Verkehrs."^ The "subject" of law, using the
term habitual among the jurists, is the person or organization to
whom its benefits pass. The protection of the law exists to assure
this benefit reaching the right place*
It is evident that at this time he was not at all clear as to the
distinction between the things the individuals wanted and the
things that were socially useful. He set forth that he was dis-
cussing the "subjective" side of law, and yet most of the terms
he uses bear more on the objective utility. He had in mind much
such an objective usefulness as the biologist employs in his rough
interpretations of organic evolution, but he also insisted on the
relativity of laws, on a usefulness "as recognized" by the law-
giver. ^
1 Geist, Vol. Ill, p. 350: "Kein Recht ist seiner selbst wegen, oder des Willens
wegen da, jades Recht findet seine Zweckbestimmung und seine Rechtfertigung
darin, dass es das Dasein oder das Wohlsein fordert, kurz in dem Nutzen in dem
oben angegebenen weitesten Sinn. Nicht der Wille oder die Macht bildet die
Substanz des Rechts, sondern der Nutzen — die Bedeutung des Willens erschopft
sich lediglich darin dass er die Zweckbestimmung des Rechts fiir das Subject ver-
mittelt, die der Macht, welche das Recht ihm gewiihrt, darin, dass er rechtlich daran
nicht gehindert wird."
2 Geist, Vol. Ill, p. 339. "Rechte sind rechtlich geschiitzte Interessen."
3 Geist, Vol. Ill, p. 338. Cf. also p. 340: Every law exists "dass es dem
Menschen irgend einen Vortheil gewahre, seine Bediirfnisse befriedige, seine Interes-
sen, Zwecke, fordere."
* Geist, Vol. Ill, p. 336. "Subject des Rechts ist derjenige dem der Nutzen
desselben vom Gesetz zugedacht ist Der Schutz des Rechts hat keinen
anderen Zweck als die Zuwendung dieses Nutzens an ihn zu sichern."
5 So, Geist, Vol. Ill, p. 343.
FEELINGS AND FACXJLTIES AS CAUSES 59
Naturally enough he was not satisfied. He felt the need of
working out a theory which would both make full allowance for
the relativity of law, and would bring individual interests and
social utilities into one effective system. He had something of the
progress to make that the economists made in disentangling their
idea of value from the idea of utility. He gave most of the rest
of his life to the task, and he never completed it. He set up a
revised theory, but some of its worst difficulties remained for the
chapters, or rather volumes, he did not live to write.
Fortunately or unfortunately, his language contained a word
which seemed a guiding star. That word was "Zweck," already
used without well-specified meaning in the Geist, a word with
great tangles of metaphysical implications which lent itself all too
readily to the jurists' distinction between subjective and objective
law, between law as the social rule and law as the individual's
right. I shall use the word "Zweck" directly in this discussion
without attempting to find an English word — purpose, aim, end,
object, intention, teleology — to substitute for it.
Jhering abandoned, then, "interest" as his chief verbal tool,'
and substituted for it "Zweck." The motto he placed on the
title-page of his great work was "Der Zweck ist der Schopfer des
ganzen Rechts" — "Zweck" is the creator of all law. And to this
he added when he pursued his subject from law into morals:
"Der Zweck ist der Schopfer der ganzen sittlichen Ordnung"^ —
"Zweck" is the creator of all moral order. The change from
interest to "Zweck" was hardly so great as it appeared to be, for
it was a change rather of words than of substance, and indeed a
considerable proportion of the old interest remained unassimilated
in the later system. But such as it was he utilized it vigorously —
it is for us to see with what result.
The word "Zweck," as I have said, lends itself readily to both
subjective and objective uses.^ On the indi^•idual side it is for
» Zweck, Vol. I, p. vii. ' Ibid., Vol. II, p. 214.
3 For the distinction between subjective and objective, see The Struggle for Law,
p. s; Entwicklungsgeschichte des romischen Rechts, pp. i, 21 ff.; Zweck, Vol. I,
chap, iii, and pp. 448, 449; Vol. II, pp. 97 (T., 135 ff., and the prefaces to Zweck,
Vols. I and II.
6o 11 IK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
Jhcring the motive or end of action, (')n the objective side it is
the- value or meaning or f)urf)ose of the laws or institutions or
customs it is called on to exjjlain. Now as it, on its subjective
side, may be regarded by some analysts of the illusive psychological
vocabulary, as rather idea than feeling, and as I have grouped
Jhering with the men who interpret society through feelings rather
than with those who inter])ret it through ideas, some explanation
of this arrangement may be necessary. Whether necessary or
not it will be useful as indicating where Jhering's theory actually
stands as to this point.
The writers whom I shall discuss in the next chapter, Morgan,
Giddings, and Dicey, use ideas or ideals in interpreting society,
but they use them as capable of a highly generalized statement
in which they appear detached from the individual souls, in which,
of course, they arc supposed to exist. Their ideas are broad social
facts, to be found by inspection of the general field of social ideas.
The procedure is much too superficial for Jhering's purposes.
His aim is to link his "Zwecke" together, from the broadest objec-
tive forms down to the most intimately individual subjective forms.
It would not be true to say that the whole stress of his interpreta-
tion falls on the individual, but certainly the stress of this psycho-
logical schematism of Zwecke falls on the individual. He has, it
is true, personified society for many important purposes, and no
one has insisted more strongly than he that the individual exists
for and through world processes ("ich bin fiir die Welt da");
but on the other hand he emphasizes the reverse of this statement
and insists that the world exists for the individual ("die Welt ist
fiir mich da").^ He maintains the existence of this distinction,
and airns continually to use the individual for his social interpre-
tations. This is of the very essence of the difficulty in the other
writers discussed in this chapter. He does not give the indi\'idual any
extra-social substantiality, any more than does Spencer; the point
is that he uses him very concretely in his social interpretations.^
1 Zweck, Vol. I, p. 67.
2 For example, ibid., p. 512: "So ist as doch schliesslich das Individuum an
dem das Recht seine Wirksamkeit aiissert, ihm kommt es zu gute, ihm legt es
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 6 1
This will be apparent from the specific character of the sub-
jective "Zwecke" which he uses in his theory. To mention the
important ones we have the two altruistic "Zwecke," duty and
love, and the egoistic "Zwecke," compensation or reward, and
compulsion or coercion. There are also egoistic motives which
do what he regards as a more strictly individualized work than
those just named. His specific use of these qualities will be
observed as our analysis proceeds.'
Let me next give a prehminary sketch of his theory and of the
problems it raises. One of the fijst points upon which he insists
is that there is no human action without a "Zweck." Even when
we hand a purse to a highwayman at the pistol's point we have
our "Zweck" in so doing, namely to exchange our purse for safety,
which we value higher. It is only when we are physically con-
Beschrankungen auf." In Vol. I, p. 258, he speaks of "rein individuelles Dasein,"
and says " Unser Zielpunkt ist der Staat und das Recht, unser Ausgangspunkt das
Individuum." In Vol. I, p. 92, he asks the question: "welche Garantien besitzt
die Gesellschaft dass Jeder zu seinem Theil den Satz verwirkliche auf dem ihr
ganzes Dasein beruht: Du bist fiir mich da ?" and adds: "Darauf soil die folgende
Ausfiihrung die Antwort ertheilen." On p. 291 he says that "der letzle Keim des
Zwanges als einer socialen Institution .... liegt in dem Individuum," and adds
that "der Daseinszweck des Individuums .... ist der erste, und in ihm liegt
daher der Urkeim des Rechts als der rechten Gewalt." For a passage in which
he puts the individual at the end instead of at the beginning of the process, and
therefore from one point of view contradicts the passages quoted, see Vol. II, p. 102;
"Auch ich gelange schliesslich zu dem Resultate, dass das Individuum das
Sittliche als Gesetz seiner selber in sich tragen soil, and dass es, indem es sittlich
handelt, nur sich selber behauptet, abcr ich gelange dazu, ich gehe nicht davon
aus."
I Many references to such specific use of psychic factors might be given. For
example there is his separation of "Zweck" from action (so, in Vol. I, p. 5); his use
of the words, " Vorstellung " and "Gedanke" (as in Vol. I, p. 11); such references
as those to "der nackte Egoismus" (Vol. I, p. 248,), to the work of the "Rechtsge-
fiihl " (Vol. I, pp. 379 ff.), to the "moralische Macht des Staatsgedankcns" (Vol. I,
pp. 319 £f.). There is his appeal to Ehre and similar factors (Vol. I, pp. 444, 445),
the passage in Vol. II, p. 118, referring to "qualitativer Fortschritt," the conclud-
ing words of the first volume in which he asks what it is that holds a man back from
doing wrong when he can do it without detection, and many of his remarks in con-
nection with his investigation of morals as portrayed by speech forms in the first
part of the second volume (N0S..4-14). The whole contrast between subjective and
objective "Zweck" might also be appealed to, as for example it is phrased in the
62 'jiir; I'ROCESS of government
strained iIklI we do not :ict with a "Zwcck," and then we cannot
properly be said to "act" at all; we are the object of someone
else's action.' This reasoning is summed up in the proposi-
tions that acting and acting for a "Zweck" are one and the
same;^ and that willing and willing for a "Zweck" are the
same.^
Interest (" Interesse ") must also be taken into account. Jher-
ing never fully stated its relation to "Zweck," this discussion
having been left for a chapter of his work which was never written.*
He makes it, apparently, the peculiarly personal desire side of the
subjective "Zweck." He calls it the relation or reference ("Be-
ziehung") of the "Zweck" to the actor, ^ and elsewhere he defines
it as the feeling of the dependence of life upon the surrounding
conditions.^ There must always be some "Interesse" with the
"Zweck," and he asserts, similarly to the sentences quoted a
preface to Vol. II, p. x. Also his reasons why "Zwang" remains necessary (Vol.
I, pp. 565 S.), "die mangelhafte Erkenntniss" and "der bose oder schwache Wille;"
and perhaps his emphasis of " hervorragcnde Geister" in Entwicklungsgeschtchte,
p. 23. In Zweck, Vol. I, p. 97, he distinctly contrasts "die praktische Bedeutung"
of the "Zwecke" for society with "die Art ihrer psychologischer Einwirkung auf
das Individuum." I may also refer to the fact that Bougie who studied Jhering's
work at short range felt justified in saying: "Toute tendance pour Jhering part des
individus et revient aux individus" (Les sciences sociales en Allemagne, p. 125);
further that all causes are "cachees dans les ames (p. 123); that "le desir, c'est le
veritable createur du monde social (p. 133); and that "le vrai moteur du monde
social reste le desir" (p. 105).
' Zweck, Vol. I, p. 16.
^ Ibid., p. 14: "Handeln und um eines Zweckes willen handeln ist gleichbe-
deutend."
3 Ibid., p. 22: "Wollen und um eines Zweckes halber woUen ist gleichbedeut-
end." Cf. also, Vol. I, p. 5: "Kein Wollen oder was dasselbe, keine Handlung
ohne Zweck."
* Ibid., pp. 30, 52, 61. I, of course, regard the unwTitten chapter as really
unwTitable.
s Ibid., p. 53: "Die Beziehung des Zweckes auf den Handelnden." Cf.
also Geist, Vol. Ill, p. 341: "Der InteressenbegrifiF erfasst die Wertheigenschaft in
besonderer Beziehung auf die Zwecke und Verhaltnisse des Subjects." Interest
is "ein realcr Druck," Zweck, Vol. I, p. 51.
^ Zweck, Vol. I, p. 30, " Gefiihl der Lebensbedingtheit."
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 63
moment ago, that there can be no action without "Intcresse."'
Sometimes however "Interesse" appears as "objective."'
In analyzing the "Zweck" we find in it first of all the satis-
faction the action gives. The satisfaction and the action are held
sharply apart as different orders of phenomena, with the satis-
faction as the thing that brings about the action. He does not
say the thing that "causes" the action, but only because he regards
the "Zweck" process as a sort of active causation, as distinguished
from the passive causation of the material world. ^ It is the
"Zweck" indeed that is the main thing; the action is merely the
means to the "Zweck," which means — at this stage of his progress
— the satisfaction. ■♦ This is radically different froi^i asserting
that all action is purposive, with purpose strictly as process, because
of the very separation which he establishes between the action and
the purpose. It is on this separation that his system is built up.
It is in this separation that his unsolved, and insoluble, puzzle
problems lie.s
"Zweck" is, however, soon made very dilTerent from satisfac-
tion, and indeed in the most objective forms to which it rises is
entirely stripped of its satisfaction aspect. The "Zwecke" of
nature come within Jhering's creed, though not within the imme-
diate purview of his work, but the "Zwecke" of society as such
play a very important role in it. They include the social "condi-
' Ibid., p. 52: "Ein Sich-Interessiren" fiir den Zweck, oder sagen wir kurz:
Interesse, ist die unerlassliche Voraussetzung einer jeden Handlung Ein
Handeln ohne Interesse ist ein eben solches Unding als ein Handeln olane Zweck."
2 So ibid., p. 38. It appears as " gesellschaf tliches," in Vol. II, p. 285. In
Vol. I, p. 257 he talks of the "Kampf der Interessen;" on p. 294 of "gemeinsame
Interessen," and on p. 372 of "praktisches Interesse."
3 Ibid., chap. i.
4 Ibid., p. 13. "Die Befriedigung welche der WoUende sich von der Handlung
verspricht ist der Zweck seines WoUens. Die Handlung selber ist nie Zweck, son-
dern nur Mittel zum Zweck." Cf. also Vol. I, pp. 28, 29, where "der individucUe
Zweck" (of animals) is said to be "pleasure;" p. 22, where the "Entschluss" is
separated from the "That," and p. 31, where the "That" is called "ausserc."
5 For the positive discussion of "purposive action" — without the separation
— as the material of social study, I can again only refer to Part II of the present
work.
64 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
tions of existence," and the stale, the church, and other forms of
social organ i /.at ion. They grade all the way down from these
through the connecting link "Zwecke" (compensation, comjml-
sion, duty, love) to the immediately seen purposes of the individual
and even to desire in its most individual statement.
For instance, he gives an illustration of the building of a rail-
road. Many men join, and the state has a share. Each partici-
pant has his individual " Interesse;" perhaps no two have the same;
and none will have an "Interesse" that covers the whole enter-
prise. The railroad itself is the "Zweck."' But there exists
a coincidence of the individual interests w'ith the general
"Zwcck."^'
With this great range of meanings for " Zweck " it is not strange
that we find him using now one, now another term, as synonymous
with it. We have just seen "Interesse" so used. We also find
"Motive,"^ "Triebfeder"4 (spring of action), "Heber's (lever),
"Mittel"*^ (means), and finally organization forms,' and condi-
tions of existence.^
By means of the term "Zweck" Jhering gives a definition of
life which is significant. Life is the practical application through
"Zwecke" of the outer world to our own existence.^ The life
of the race as a whole can be summed up as the substance or the
I Zweck, Vol. I, p. 43; "Jeder hat sein eigenes Interesse im Auge: keiner den
Zweck."
'Ibid., p. 37: "Coincidenz ihrer Interessen mit dam allgemeinen Zweck;"
also, p. 46; "Coincidenz der beiderseitigen Zwecke und Interessen."
3 Ibid., p. 28, footnote.
* Ibid., pp. 60, 94 ; Vol. II, p. 11, and frequently elsewhere.
5 Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 60, 95.
6 Ibid., p. 96.
"! Ibid., p. 42. Compare also p. 97 where in defining "Verkehr," he uses
motives, means, and form as distinct.
8 Ibid., pp. 435 ff.
<> Ibid., p. 9: "Leben ist praktische Zweckbeziehung der Aussenwelt auf das
eigene Dasein;" also Vol. II, p. 197; "Leben ist Zweckverwendung der Aussen-
welt fiir das eigene Dasein." Cf. also Vol. I, p. 25, "In dem Zweck steckt der
Mensch, die Menschheit, die Geschichte," and Vol. II, p. 178, where he talks of
the unity of society "durch die Gemeinsamkeit des Zwecks hergestellt."
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 65
essence of all human "Zwecke."^ It will be noted that this is a
definition of life in terms of "Zweck," not of "Zweck" in terms
of life, which alone is possible. He proposes to show the inner
dependency of the "Zwecke," how the higher are connected with
the lower, and how some of them by an inevitable "Zweck"
necessity give rise to the others in one great system." The founda-
tion of society Hes in the process by which one man's "Zweck" is
bound up with the interests of all.^ These interests must be found
converging on the common "Zweck."
In this brief statement of Jhering's theory we have observed
" Zwecke " and " Interessen " which are not too sharply distinguished
from each other. We have found "Zwecke" (and "Interessen")
scattered through all the individuals in the society, where they
are, so to speak, on a common level, that is alike in quality or kind.
We have found "Zwecke" also running in an ascending series — on
different levels, so to speak — becoming ever more and more objec-
tive. The problem is to harmonize them in all three hnes: to
harmonize the "Zwecke" with the "Interessen;" to harmonize the
" Zwecke " and " Interessen " of many individuals with one another ;
to harmonize the objective "Zwecke" with the subjective.
In order to pass a fair judgment upon Jhering's success or
failure in effecting these harmonies, it will be necessary to look
through his whole system of "Zwecke" in all its typical presenta-
tions.
It is through a "Systematik der menschlichen Zwecke" that
he works up his theory. '* All human "Zwecke," he tells us, fall
' Ibid., Vol. I, p. 57: "Das raenschliche Leben in diesem Sinn, d. i., das Leben
der Gattung Mensch, nicht des Individuums, heisst der InbegrifF der gesammten
menschlichen Zwecke."
2 Ibid., p. 57: He proposes to show "den inneren Zusammcnhang in dcm sie
unter einander stehen," and further "wie einer an den andcrcn ankniipft, der
hohere an den niedern, and nicht bloss ankniipft sondern wie einer in der Con-
sequenz seiner selbst mit zwingender Nothwendigkeit den anderen aus sich her-
vortreibt."
3 Ibid., p. 37; "Die Verkniipfung des eigenen Zwecks mit dcm freniden
Interesse. Auf dieser Formcl beruht unser ganzes menschlichcs Leben: der
Staat, die Gesellschaft, Handel und Verkehr."
4 Ibid., pp. 58 fif.; pp. 94 fT.
00 THE rKoci:ss or government
into two Krcat groups, those of the individual, and those of the
collectivity (society) — " Gemeinschaft," " Gesammtheit," "Gesell-
schaft." One must not think that this distinction between the
individual and society is the same as that between subjective and
objective. It is not. The individual "Zweckc" may be worked
up objectively, and the social "Zwecke" we shall find treated
largely as individual motives or "Tricbfeder." We are sup-
posed to get these "Zwecke" by a study of the actual individual
as he exists ("grcifen sie aus dem Individuum"). They are
not prior to society, but are the actual "Zwecke" of men in
society. <
The "Zwecke" of the individual are those in which the indi-
vidual has merely himself in mind, not the society or any other
person.' These arc to be called "egoistische Zwecke." They
are directed toward individual or egoistical self-maintenance
("Selbstbehauptung"). There are many kinds of them, but
attention may be centered for the purposes of his work, he says,
on three kinds : those that have to do with (i) physical; (2) eco-
nomic; and (3) legal self-maintenance.
The second group, those of the collectivity, may be called
"sociale Zwecke." They are likewise borne in the individual
man — there is nowhere else for them to exist — but they have to
do with his social acti\dty ("sociale Handeln").
A first subclassification (more objective) of this second group
is into the unorganized and the organized. Unorganized " Zwecke"
may be found in the scientific activity of men — all the scientists
pushing along from their own personal "Zwecke" and "Interes-
sen," and building up a great scientific world — or again in a politi-
cal party, which he conceives of as made up of a lot of separate
men with separate "Zwecke," combining in a social whole or
"Zweck."^ The organized "Zwecke" are found in their typical
form in the state, which is the crowTiing work of the organization
^Zweck, Vol. I, p. 59: "bei denen das Individuum lediglich sich selbst, nicht
die Gesellschaf t : d. i., irgend eine andere Person oder einen hoheren Zweck im
Auge hat."
' Ibid., p. 42: The political party "beruht lediglich auf dem Dasein und der
Starke des Interesses in den einzelnen Mitgliedem."
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 67
of "Zwecke." They also appear in the church, the "Verein," the
"Genossenschaft," the " Gesellschaf t " and the legal "Person."'
A different sub-classification (more subjective) of the "sociale
Zwecke" is into the egoistic and the ethical. The egoistic social
"Zwecke" here must not be confused with the egoistic individual
"Zwecke" above, although they are made out of the same stuff
("der uns bereits bekannte Egoismus"). They are egoism on its
social side, or in its social phase, and they appear in two forms,
"Lohn" (compensation or reward), and "Zwang" (compulsion
or coercion), the "Lohn Zwecke" having their typical manifesta-
tion in commerce in a very broad sense of the term ("Verkehr"),
and the "Zwang Zwecke" producing for us the state. Of the
ethical "Zwecke" — those of the "ethical self-maintenance of the
individual" — we likewise find two forms, "Pflicht" (duty) and
" Liebe" (love). The theory of these four form.s of social "Zwecke,"
compensation, compulsion, duty, and love, is the "social me-
chanics."^
The remainder of my statement of Jhering's theory will be
devoted to showing seriatim, how first the indi\idual "Zwecke,"
and then the four social " Zwecke," arc utilized by him in his social
mechanics to build society up out of individuals, and to hold the
individuals in their social bonds. But first I will indicate briefly
the central line which criticism of the theory must follow.
The four social "Zwecke" are variously called, as stated a few
pages back, motives, impulses, means, and levers, in addition to
being called "Zwecke." The fact that they belong to an elaborate
hierarchy of "Zwecke" does not save them from being used very
concretely, as "things" separated from the external "action" and
appealed to to produce it. This despised "action" is nevertheless
ultimately or immediately the basis for the classification of the
"Zwecke," and since it is resorted to not clearly but obscurely, it
not only takes the assumed causal (or "Zwcck") value out of the
' These "Zwecke" will appear at times as organization forms of "Zwecke,"
and some of them from a still different point of view, as "Zwecksubjecte."
' Zweck, YoL I, p. g4: "Sociale Mechanik" .... " der Inbegrifif der Trieb-
federn und Miichte."
\
68 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
"Zwccke," but throws the whole system askew. A classification
of "Zwecke" into organized and unorganized is clearly a classi-
fication of institutions. The two ethical "Hebel," duty and love,
come from the old ethics, retaining their specific "thingness."
The egoistic social "Rebel," compensation and compulsion, are
constructed to match duty and love in quality, for the express
purpose of being used to explain commerce and the state, as we
shall see as we go along. The egoistic individual "Zwecke" are
kept separate from the egoistic social "Zwecke" to serve the
purpose of an intermediate stage in the scries, and make its sche-
matism more plausible. In all this, soul-stuff is being used, and
what coherency there is, is verbal, not actual.
I. The individual (egoistic) "ZweckJ^ — Taking up now the
individual "Zwecke" it will be recalled that the classification was,
into (i) physical, (2) economic, and (3) legal self-maintenance.
The scries of " Zwecke" that he works up out of these is as follows:
Person — Property — Law — State ("Person " — " Vermogen " —
" Rccht " — " Staat ").' We seek to protect and foster our personal
welfare as physical creatures. In the course of such endeavors
we annex inanimate and later animate objects to ourselves. These
are property. We bring all our properties into a system which
guarantees each of us in the possession of his own. Thus we
have arrived at legal rights. Behind the law, to keep it in effective
working order, we estabhsh the state. Our egoistic "Zwecke"
evolve in the three stages and are working away for our w^elfare
all the time. In this condensed statement I do not mean to imply
that Jhcring's theory is that we consciously create the institutions
which correspond to these "Zwecke" out of purely individual
egoistic motives, or that he treats such motives ("Zwecke") as
furnishing a full explanation of this development. But "Zwecke"
of this individual egoistic character are, he holds, continually at
work against and upon the social institutions; the evolution
presses forward without halting.^ WTiilc the individual is operat-
> Zweck, Vol. I, chap. v.
' Ibid., p. 74. " Wie die Person und das Vermogen das Recht, so postulirt das
Recht den Staat: die praktische Triebkraft des Zwecks driingt mit Nothwendig-
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 69
ing on the world solely from the standpoint of his own interest
("lediglich unter dem Gcsichtspunkt seines Interesses"), he both
makes the world servaceablc ("dienstbar") to his interest, and
his interest becomes serviceable to the world.'
2. The social ^^ Zwecke^^ {egoistic) " Lolui." — Passing now from
the individual "Zwecke, " we have next to examine the first of
the four social "Zwecke" or "Hebel," which Jhering makes use
of. It is "Lohn," compensation or reward. Whereas before he
was showing the individual's interest, considered all by itself, in
everything social, he is now aiming to show how a lot of different
individuals adapt themselves to one another and to the society.
The "Lohn Zweck," he believes, gives him the explanation for
all the phenomena of what he calls "Verkehr," which may be
translated either commerce, in a very broad sense, or intercourse, in
a speciahzed sense. "Verkehr" includes all forms of commerce
and all forms of voluntary association.^
The commerce and trade phenomena ("Tausch") are the lower
form of "Verkehr." Here the different individuals have different
"Zwecke," but by getting compensation from one another they
harmonize themselves. In his proof Jhering uses much such a
range of facts about individual surplus values and utilities as the
economist uses in analyzing trade. Barter is the simplest of these
forms. jNIoney and credit and the trades and professions build
themselves on top of it, and so also all the commercial, financial,
and industrial customs and methods. Competition is the social
self-regulation of egoism.^ The trades and professions are the
organization of "Lohn."'* Not only material rewards are listed
under "Lohn," but also "ideal," the latter including all the imma-
terial goods which men gain in their dealings with one another.
Ideal compensation again may be divided into external and inter-
keit von dcm einen zum anderen." P. 76: "Der Zweckbegriff driingt von der
Person zum Vermogen, von beiden zum Recht, vom Recht zum Staat — es ist kein
Halten in dieser Evolution des Zweckgedankens, bis die hochste Spitze erreicht ist."
- I Ibid., p. 76. > Ibid., chap. vii. 3 Ibid., p. 135.
* Ibid., p. 150. Cf. p. 117: "Verkehr" "is the completed system of
egoism."
70 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
nal, the foriiirr \)vuv^ illuslrak-d by fame, and the latter by soul
satisfactions of one kind and another.'
A higher form of "Verkchr," which is likewise the product of
the "Lohn Zweck," is voluntary association. His terms are
"Socictat," "Societatsvertrag," " Association. "=» Here instead of
having comi)lementary purposes all the individual participants have
the identical purpose. The individuals line up side by side for
some common work. As illustrations of the special "Zwecke"
found in the "Societal," one may name such things as care for
public security, the making of roads, the building of schools,
care of the poor, provision for preachers, and the building of
churches; all of these, of course, only when the state does not
provide them and when voluntary combination is necessary.^
All co-operative organizations and associations from the lowest
to the highest, "even to church and state," are to be arrayed with
the "Societat."
Now although the "Societat" is from the point of view of
"Lohn," which is the "Zweck" or "Hebel" behind it, a second
form of " Verkehr," it is nevertheless an organization form of such
general applicability that it is deserving of being called the second
fundamental form or type of social existence, "* the "Tausch"
society being of course the first fundamental form. In it we find
people exhibiting " Gemeinsinn," which is an ennobled form of
egoism ("nur cine veredelte Form des Egoismus").^ This "Ge-
meinsinn" is brought in by Jhering for use later in interpreting
the transition from egoism to altruism, and we shall meet it again.
» Zweck, Vol. I, pp. i8i S.
'Ibid., pp. 208 ff. P. 208: "Der Tauschvertrag hat die Verschiedenheit,
die Societat die Gleichheit des Zwecks zur Voraussetzung." He thinks (p. 126):
"der Gedanke einer gemeinschaftlichen Verkehrsoperation war^das Werk eines
findigen, denkenden Kopfes."
3 Ibid., pp. 209, 210.
4 Ibid., p. 215: "Die Association ist eine Form von der allgemeinsten Anwend-
barkeit, sie ist in der That das, wofiir ich sie oben ausgegeben: die zweite Grund-
form des gesellschafthchen Daseins." At p. 125, however, he calls it a "Grund-
form des Verkehrs," instead of "des gesellschafthchen Daseins," and the additional
statement is made: "Eine dritte Grundform gibt es nicht, kann es nicht geben."
s Ibid., p. 219.
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 71
One further point about "Verkehr" must be noted. Jhering
says that it is perhaps the only bit of the human world which is
the natural product of the free development of the "Zwecke;"'
and while I am trying to avoid inserting criticisms in the midst of
this description of his theory, I cannot forbear pointing out the
striking contradictions in such a statement. We shall find in a
moment that while the state is mentioned as the highest develop-
ment of the second fundamental form of "Verkehr," nevertheless
his elaborate interpretation throws it outside the operation of
"Lohn," and in the field of the operation of the next of the four
"Hebel," "Zwang" (compulsion). And with the state goes law.
Yet here we have him excluding the state and law from the "free
development" of the "Zwecke," in the very face of the fact that
law and the state are themselves "Zwecke," that they rest on a
"Zweck" ("Zwang"), and that the motto of his book is, "Zweck"
is the creator of all law. It is but a sample of the contradictions
involved in his terminology.
3. The social ^^ Zwecke^ ^ {egoistic) ^' Zwang.'' — So much for
the working of the "Lohn Zweck." We have next to examine
the "Zwang Zweck" as it supplements "Lohn" in knitting the
indi\iduals together into society, and as it carries the social process
to still higher levels. We shall see it take up the "Societat" and
build it up into the perfected state. It must be remembered that
the "Zwang" which Jhering uses is not a mechanical, but a psychi-
cal compulsion, or coercion. He uses "Gewalt," the broader
word, to describe all exertions of force, both mechanical and
psychical, but "Zwang" where the force is applied by influencing
the wilL^"
We must note this peculiarity in the working-out of his system
at this point. He tells us that "Zwang" is "lower" and older
than "Lohn," but that nevertheless it is the basis of a "higher"
1 Ibid., p. 97. "Diese Organisation ist wie vielleicht kein anderes Stiick der
menschlichen Welt das natiirliche Product der freien Zweckentfaltung."
2 Ibid., pp. 234 ff. So, p. 234, "Untcr Zwang im weitern Sinn vcrstehen wir
die Verwirklichung eines Zweckes mittelst Bewaltigung cines fremden Willens,
der Begrifif des Zwanges setzt activ wie passiv ein Willenssubject, ein lebendes
Wesen voraus."
72 Tin: PROCESS of government
form of social organization.' As a motive he thinks that "Zwang"
is found among animals, but that "Lohn" is unknown to them.
Moreover "Zwang" is the basis of the earliest interactions among
men, while "Lohn" only appears later. On the other hand the
organization through "Zwang," the state with its law, comes later
, and is more comj)lex and more highly evolved than the organiza-
*tion through trade, commerce, and other "Verkehr" forms. He
conceives of highly evolved commerce, structures, and organiza-
tions as possible without the intervention of "Zwang," while he
conceives of the state as appearing in and upon "Verkehr" society
and working up portions of it in a more effective way^ — a point
of view which is a natural by-product of his dependence upon
"Zweckc," but which must be regarded as exceedingly unfortunate
considering what is now known of the solidarity of horde hfe, of
mutual aid in early organizations of living beings, and in general
of the community setting in which such institutions as private
property develop.
"Zwang" begins of course in the individual, and without
'•Zwang" the individual cannot realize his "Zwecke," but through
"Zwang" his "Zweckc" rise straight up to law and to the state.^
Law and the state are the organization of "Zwang," just as "Ver-
kehr" was the organization of "Lohn," but there is also a field
of " unorganized " " Zwang, "^ a social as opposed to legal " Zwang,"
w^hich we shall meet later when he uses it in connection with his
interpretation of moral phenomena.
In working up his organization through "Zwang" Jhering finds
it necessary to draw a distinction between a system of "Zwecke,"
and a system of the realization of " Zwecke. "^ He develops
I Zweck, Vol. I, pp. 96, 97, 238.
' Ibid., p. 232: "Langst bevor der Staat sich erhob vom Lager .... hatte
der Handel schon ein gut Theil seines Tageswerkes voUbracht."
3 Ibid., p. 291 : " Jeder der Zwecke den es (das Indmduum) . . . . als
Lebensbedingung empfindet postulirt den Zwang. Mit diesem Postulate ist aber
das Recht postulirt als die Organisation des Zwanges."
4 Ibid., p. 236: "Der staatliche Zwang hat zu seinem Object die Verwirklich-
ung des Rechts, der sociale, die des Sittlichen."
5 Ibid., p. 74; also p. 311: "Die Organisation schliesst zwei Seiten in sich —
die Herstellung des aiisseren Mechanismus der Gewalt, und die Aufstellung von
Grundsatzen welche den Gebrauch derselben regeln."
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 73
the distinction by discriminating between the elements of "Norm"
and "Gewalt." "Norm" is the rule or precept clement in law
and the state. "Gewalt" is the law-enforcement element. It
will be noted that while "Zwang" is psychic, nevertheless Jhering
finds it desirable to revert to "Gewalt" to describe the organized
power of the state. The change of terms does not speak well
for the adequacy of his "Zwang" as an agent of interpretation,
but it is usefully employed to set forth the "heavy hand" of the
state as a social fact. He asserts a steady progression from " Norm "
to "Gewalt" and from "Gewalt" to "Norm."' "Gewalt"
answers in a general way to conditions in a despotic state and
"Norm" to conditions in a republic.
I will proceed to describe first his position with regard to the
"Gewalt," then with regard to the "Norm" element, and finally
his completed statement in terms of " Zwecksubjecte " and "Le-
bensbedingungen," letting him speak for himself in quotations
as far as is practicable.
His formal definition of the state, from the point of view of
force, is that the state is society as the possessor of the regulated
and disciphned "Zwangsgewalt": from this point of view law is
the substance of the principles in accordance with which the state
so acts; it is the discipline or apphed science of Zwang.^ The
organization of the "Zwang" for the "Zwecke" of society rests
on the building-up of the power ("Macht") which appHes the
"Zwangsgewalt and on the establishment of rules for its applica-
tion^ "Gewalt" drives out of itself law as the measure of itself:
law as the politics of force* Law without "Gewalt" is an empty
name with no reality. ^ The state is the final form of the applica-
I Ibid., pp. 248, 249: "Die Norm gelangt zur Gewalt, die Gewalt zur Norm."
' Ibid., p. 308: "Der Staat ist die Gesellschaft als Inhaberin der geregelten
und disciplinirten Zwangsgewalt. Der InbegrifF der Grundsiitze nach dencn cr in
dieser Weise thiitig wird: die Disciplin des Zwanges ist das Recht."
3 Ibid, p. 236: "auf der Herstellung der Macht welche die Zwangsgewalt
ausiibt, und der Aufstcllung von Rcgeln iiber die Ausiibung derselben."
* Ibid., p. 249: die Gewalt "treibt das Recht als Maass ihrer selbst aus sich
heraus — das Recht als Politik der Gewalt."
s Ibid., p. 253: "Das Recht ohne die Gewalt ist ein Iccrcr Name ohne alle
Realitat."
74 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
tion of "Gewall" for human "Zwcckc." It is the social organi-
zation of the "Zwangsgcwalt."' The great "Zweck" of the state
is the law "Zweck," the formation and safeguarding of the law-
The nurture of the law is the vital function in the life of the state.'
The state is the single source of law.^ There is no test of law
except its recognition and realization by the power of the state.'*
A legal rule without legal "Zwang" is a self-contradiction.^
Looking back from the state to the "Societat," we find the latter
called the prototype of the former, for in both of them the method
of the regulation of "Gewalt" by "Interesse" is the same.^ The
"Societat" effects the transition between the unregulated form of
"Gewalt" in the individual and the regulated form in the state.'
The one is built on "Lohn," and the other on "Zwang," but both
together make a single form of social organization as opposed to
that "free development" of the "Zwecke" which we saw in
" Verkehr." To appreciate the patchwork of his position we rnay
remember that the "Societat," which was at first a fundamental
form of Verkehr," became later, as here, a fundamental form of
social existence.
This " Staatsgewalt " would normally be maintained by the
majority of all the people of the state. But often we find a minority
possessing and exercising it. To understand this we must add
' Zweck, Vol. I, p. 307: "die endgiiltige Form der Verwendung der Gewalt
fiir die menschlichen Zwecke, die sociale Organisation der Zwangsgcwalt."
'Ibid., p. 309: "derRechtszweck: die Gestaltung und Sicherung des Rechts.
.... Die Pflege des Rechts ist die vitale Lebensfunction des Staates."
3 Ibid., p. 320: "die alleinige Quelle des Rechts."
*Ibid., p. 321: "Anerkennung und Verwirklichung durch die Staatsgewalt."
5 Ibid., p. 322: " Ein Rechtssatz ohne Rechtszwang ist ein Widerspruch in sich
selbst."
^ Ibid., p. 295: "Soweit sonst auch der Staat und die Societat auseinander
gehen, das Schema in Bezug auf die Regelung der Gewalt durch das Interesse ist
bei beiden ganz dasselbe — die Societat enthalt den Prototyp des Staates." Com-
pare also p. 305 : " Der Verein ist die Organisationsform der Gesellschaft schlecht-
hin," and p. 307, where the series, "Individuum, Verein, Staat," is made the
"geschichtHche Stufenleiter der gesellschaftlichen Zwecke."
7 Ibid., p. 295:. "Sie vermittelt den Uebergang von der ungeregelten Form der
Gewalt beim Individuum zur Regelung derselben durch den Staat."
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 75
two other factors to mere number. The first is the organization
of the minority, enabhng it to use its strength more effectively
("die Organisation der Macht in den Handen der Staatsgewalt").
The second is the moral might of the state idea ("die moralische
Macht des Staatsgedankcns").' The "Staatsgewalt" can there-
fore be described as a differentiated portion of the power of the
people ("ein ausgeschiedenes Quantum der Volkskraft"). It
is the preponderance of organized might over unorganized might
(" Uebergewicht der organisirten Macht uber die unorganisirte
Macht ").^
Given now this differentiated state power, resting at times and
places in a minority of the people, then the critical point in the
whole organization of law and of the state, the kernel problem, is
that of the preponderance of the common interests of all of us over
the particular interest of the single individual. The common
interests are upheld by all of us. The particular interests have
only single individuals to uphold them. With equality of strength
all of us will come to suppress the individual interests, and this
so much the more rapidly as the total number of members in the
society increases. Power is brought upon the side of the common
interests. 3 I call attention in passing to this statement in terms
of interests, and more particularly to the moral might of the state
idea mentioned in the preceding paragraph. This "moral might"
1 Ibid., p. 319: "Ich verstehe darunter alle diejenigen psychologischen
Motive .... die Einsicht in die Nothwendigkeit der staatlichen Ordnung,
den Sinn fiir Recht und Gesetz, die Angst vor der mil jeder Storung der
Ordnung verbundenen Bedrohung der Person und des Eigenthums, die Furcht
vor der Strafe."
2 Ibid., p. 316.
3 Ibid., p. 294: The "springender Punkt" is "das Uebergewicht der gemein-
samen Interessen AUer iiber das Partikularinteresse eines Einzelnen; fiir die gemein-
samen Interessen treten Alle ein; fiir das Partikularinteresse nur der Einzelnc.
Die Macht Aller aber ist bei Gleichheit der Kriifte der des Einzelnen iiberlegen,
und sie wird es urn so mehr, je grosser die Zahl derselben ist." The "Schema
fiir die gesellschaftliche Organisation der Gewalt" becomes: "Uebergewicht der
dem Interessc Aller dienstbaren Gewalt iiber das bloss dem Einzelnen fiir scin
Interesse zur Vcrfiigung stehende Maass derselben, die Macht ist auf Scilen des
Allen gemeinsamen Interesses gebracht."
76 TUK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
— a factor akin to the " RichlsKcfuhr" soon lo be introduced — is
assigned a very important function in his system, although only a
brief paragraph is given to its treatment. It represents an area
of social fact never fully functioned in his theory.
We pass now to the Norm. A Norm is a "Satz praktischer
Art": it is an "abstracter Imperativ."* Besides the legal norms
there are the norms of morals ("Moral") and of socially enforced
habit ("Sittc," as distinguished from mere social habit, "Ge-
wohnheit"). In law alone, however, it is the state that realizes
("verwirklicht") the norm, and in law alone does the state estab-
lish the norm, although there is some law here and there estab-
lished by society directly. For "Moral" and "Sitte" it is society
that both establishes and enforces it. The distinction is between
the organized and unorganized "Zwang."
Among "legal imperatives" Jhering distinguishes three grades,^
forming a hierarchy, among which only the last two are "legal
norms," and only the last one is perfected law. First there is the
direct command to an individual to do a particular act ("Indi-
vidualgebot"). This is concrete, not abstract, and is a norm only
in the sense that it contains within it the undifferentiated material
of norms. Next comes the norm which is binding on the people
to whom it is directed, but not on the " Staatsgewalt " itself which
issues it. This is abstract and so a norm, but not full law- it is
the "einseitig verbindende Norm," binding in one direction only.
Finally comes the norm which is binding not only on the people
but on the state authorities as well, the "zweiseitig verbindende
Norm," binding in both directions. With this the "Staatsgewalt"
has come into subordination to its own laws,'' and now at last the
real " Rechtszustand " has been reached.
Were we to follow his analysis farther here we should find
under the "norms binding in one direction" an examination of
I Of course he insists: "Nicht das Rechtsgefiihl hat das Recht erzeugt, sondern
das Recht das Rechtsgefiihl" (so p. xiv), and the same would of course apply for
the "moralische Macht des Staatsgedankens," but that is not sufficient.
' Zweck, Vol. I, pp. 330, 331. 3 Ibid., p. 338.
*Ibid., p. 358: "Die Unterordnung der Staatsgewalt unter die von ihr selber
erlassenen Gesetze."
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 77
the order thereby estabhshed, of the measure of equahty produced,
and of the subjective ''Recht," or sense of legal rightness and
desire to obey the legally right, which is developed in the individ-
uals. Under the "norms binding in both directions," the chief
problem raised concerns the reasons which hold the " Staatsgewalt "
in subordination to its own laws. The motives for this subordi-
nation are placed in self-interest, inasmuch as law is not merely the
pohtics of force, but the intelligent politics of force ("wohlver-
standene Politik der Gewalt").' The guaranties of the sub-
ordination are found in the developed legal consciousness (" Rechts-
gefiihl") and in the professional cultivation of the law ("Rechts-
pflege").^ The independence of the judiciar}^ receives consider-
ation here as a factor, and there is also a discussion of the proper
limits of subordination which is entirely apart from our present
purpose. Government respects its law, Jhering sums up, because
of the actual power which lies behind the law, a people which has
recognized in the law the condition of its existence, and which feels
an injury to the law as an injury to its own self; a people which, we
may rest assured, will in extremity take up arms for its law. Thus
in the end, he adds, the safety of the law rests on the energy of the
national consciousness of legal right. ^
Now even with "Norm" and "Zwang" thus analyzed Jhering
feels that he has not yet got beyond a "formal" statement of the
facts. The content ("Inhalt") of the law must still be studied.
To correspond with his definition of law and the state in terms of
force we now get a definition in terms of content. Law is the form
which the conditions of social existence assume under the guarantee
of the state.'* We have next to discover what these conditions of
1 Ibid., p. 378. Cf. also p^ 566: "Die Vereinigung der Einsichtigcn unrl
Weitsichtigen gegen die Kurzsichtigen."
2 Ibid., pp. 379 ff.
3 Ibid., pp. 381, 382: "Lediglich die reale Kraft die hintcr dem Gesctz stcht>
ein Volk, das in dem Recht die Bedingung seines Daseins erkannt hat, und dcssen
Verletzung als eine Verletzung seiner selbst cmpfindet, ein Volk von dem zu gewarti-
gen ist, dass es aussersten Falls fiir sein Recht in die Schranken tritt So
hangt die Sicherheit des Rechts schliesslich nur an der Energie des nationalen
Rechtsgefuhls."
4 Ibid., p. 443 : " Die Form der durch die Zwangsgewalt des Staatcs beschafftcn
Sicherung der Lebensbedingungen der Gesellschaft."
78 THE procp:ss of government
social existence ("Lcbensbedingungen") are, and how they are
apportioned to certain "Zwecksubjecte" as their beneficiaries.
These conditions of social existence embrace all that is the goal
of human slruf^glint^ and striving: they are the presuppositions
upon which subjectively life in the wider sense depends — life,
that is, as including both existence and weal (" Dasein" and " Wohl-
sein"); they arc the goods and enjoyments through which man
feels his life conditioned.' Ideal as well as material blessings are
included; and honor, freedom, nationality, love, activity, religion,
culture, art, and science are not to be omitted from the list.
Some of these "conditions" are non-legal in their method of
operation, some mixed legal, and some pure legal. Such a "con-
dition of existence" as "thou shalt not steal" is pure legal. Of
mixed-legal conditions, he discusses four — the maintenance of life,
the propagation of life, labor, and commerce — on the basis of
three "Motive," the impulse to self-preservation, the sex impulse,
and the economic impulse.*
Now, he says, if all legal precepts have the safeguarding of the
social conditions of existence as their "Zweck," that is the same
as saying that society is their "Zwecksubject."^ He takes the
word "Subject" from its old legal usage, and gives it a meaning,
not with reference to the law of the codes, but with reference to
the ."Zwecke." He makes society a "person" or living being
("lebendes Wescn"); he develops a "social teleology" similar
to "indi\adual teleology;" and in so doing he personifies society
in a way which we shall find to have very important results for
the ultimate characterization and criticism of his system."*
I Zweck, Vol. I, pp. 444, 445 : " Sie umfassen alles was das Ziel des menschlichen
Ringens und Strebens bildet Die Voraussetzungen an welche subjectiv
das Leben in diesem weitern Sinne gekniipft ist nenne ich Lebensbedingungen.
.... Die Giiter und Geniissedurch welche der Mensch sein Leben bedingt fiihlt."
' Ibid., pp. 542-60.
3 Ibid., p. 462. "Wenn alle Rechtssatze die Sicherung der Lebensbedingungen
der Gesellschaft zum Zweck haben, so heisst das: die Gesellschaft ist das Zweck-
subject derselben."
* Ibid., Vol. II, p. 88: "Ein Subject, d. h. ein lebendes Wesen." "Princip
des Sittlichen kann nicht etwas Unpersonliches, sondern nur die Person, ein lebendes
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 79
But it does not satisfy him to say that society, personified for
the purpose, is the subject of all law. He carries his analysis
farther than that. He recognizes that for certain of the laws their
"Zwecksubject" must be looked for directly in the individuals,
for others directly in the state, for still others directly in the church,
and finally for others directly in voluntary associations (here
"Vereine"). But when all is said and done there are an immense
number of laws which cannot be attributed so far as their " Zwcck "
is concerned to any one of these four " Subjecte." A good illustra-
tion of what he means can be found in property;' private property
has the particular individual for its "Subject;" government prop"
erty has the state, but the public uses of property as, for instance,
of public parks, or of state churches, cannot be located in either
one or the other. To meet such cases he brings into account as
an additional "Zwecksubjcct," society in the narrower sense of
the term (" Gesellschaft im engcrcn Sinne") which he distinguishes
sharply from society in the broad sense. ^ Society in the narrower
sense includes the mass of the people in their common (not separate
individual) interests. He defines it as the indefinite many, the
mass ("die unbestimmte Vielheit, die Masse").
Adding this to the four other "Zwecksubjecte," we have the
following series :
I. "Individuum."
"Staat."
"Kirche."
"Vereine."
5. "Gesellschaft (im engercn Sinne)."
All of these, be it remembered are included in society in the
wider sense, the state and society in the narrower sense being so
included just as much as the others. In the wider sense society
is the whole range of organized and unorganized social interaction.
The state appears within it, for example, only as society specially
Wesen sein;" Vol. II, pp. 150, 193. In contrast compare Vol. I, p. 87: "Die
Gesellschaft ist zu definiren als die thatsachliche Organisation des Lebens fiir und
durch Andere," etc.
I Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 446 ff. ' Ibid., pp. 464 ff.
8o THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
organized to use comjjulsion ("Staat ist die Gesellschaft welchc
zwingt).'" The five "Subjecte" in the table embrace the whole
range of society in the broader sense, and give a complete analysis
of the beneficiaries of law and legal institutions." Society in the
narrower sense is the beneficiary of all laws not to be attributed
to one of the other four.
Discussing crime from the i)oinl of view of the " Zwecksubjecte,"
Jhi-ring asserts that punishments are established wherever society
cannot get along without them; that crime is such legally marked
injury to the necessary conditions of social life as cannot be warded
off without punishment; and that the scale of punishment is the
foot rule of social values. ^
His exhaustive ("erschopfende") definition of law, which
follows the earlier definitions as to form and content is: Law is
the substance of the conditions of social existence in the widest
sense of the word social as made secure by external compulsion
through the power of the state.'*
4. The social '' Zwecke'' {ethical), "Pflichi" and '' Liehe:'—
With this we have traversed society in its main outlines as far as
> Zweck, Vol. I, p. 309.
2 Ibid., pp. 464, 465: "Auf diese fiinf Zwecksubjecte bezieht sich das ganze
Recht: sie sind die personlichen Zweckcentren des gesammten Rechts, um die sich
sammtliche Einrichtungen derselben gruppiren." The "Zwecksubjecte" should
be distinguished from the bearers of the power of the state, the organs, namely, to
which is intrusted the duty of enforcing the law. Jhering does not regard any
law as directed at the people who must obey it. It is directed ("gerichtet") instead,
"an die Organe die mit der Handhabung des Zwanges betraut sind" (p. 336).
Compare also pp. 337, 338: "Die Rechtsnorm enthalt einen abstracten Imperativ
an die Organe der Staatsgewalt, und die externe Wirkung, d. i. die Befolgung
derselben von Seiten des Volks, soweit dazu Anlass geboten ist, muss von diesem
rein formaljuristischen Gesichtspunkt (nicht vom teleologischen) jener primaren
gegcniibcr Icdiglich als secundiire bezcichnet werden."
3 Ibid., pp. 490-92. We find "Strafe iiberall da wo die Gesellschaft ohne
sie nicht auskommen kann Verbrechen ist die von Seiten der Gesetz-
gebung constatirte nur durch Strafe abzuwehrende Gefahrdung der Lebensbe-
dingungen der Gesellschaft Der Tarif der Strafe ist der Werthmesser der
socialcn Giiter."
* Ibid., p. 511: "Recht ist der Inbegriff der mittelst ausseren Zwanges durch
die Staatsgewalt gesicherten Lebensbedingtmgen der Gesellschaft im weitesten
Sinnc des Wortes."
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 8l
Jhering has been able to build it up out of "Lohn" and "Zwang,"
the two egoistic "Hebcl." But he did not hold that these two
"Zwecke" gave a complete picture of society. There were still
phenomena beyond, which he could only explain by appeal to the
two ethical "Hebel," duty and love ("Pflicht" and ^'Liebe").
Duty and love were necessary motives both to complete the work
of "Lohn" and "Zwang" in the very fields of commerce and the
state, and to hold men together socially in other fields lying outside
of these two.
Moral phenomena are according to Jhering just as completely
social as any others. They have their origin and function and
"Zweck" in society and are to be studied nowhere else than in
society and in no other way than through society. This is as
true of them in their subjective aspects, that is as motives, as it
is of them in their objective aspects, as social norms. His purpose
is now as before to get a system of objective "Zwecke" and a
system of subjective "Zwecke" built up, and to connect the two
with each other and also with individual interest. On the objective
side he sets himself the problems of the origin of the norms and of
their "Zweck," and on the subjective side the problem of the
motives.
On the subjective side he intended to build altruism up out
of egoism, and while the exposition was left for the unfinished
portion of his work, many sentences were written showing the
line he would have taken. Egoism, which is a work of nature,
is transformed, he tells us, by history into its opposite.* The
altruistic quahties are very real qualities; they exist just as surely
as the egoistic qualities, once they have appeared, and they can
be reckoned on just as surely. The "Gemeinsinn," wliicli he
I Ibid., Vol. II, p. ii8: "Der Egoismus ist in sein geradcs Gegenthcil umgc-
schlagcn. Er hat sich selber negirt. Die Aenderung, die hier vor sich gegangcn
ist qualitativer Art, die Geschichte bildet aus dcm Thone, dem Teigc den die Natur
ihr geliefert hat: dem natiirlichen Menschen, dem Thiere ein Wesen hbherer Art;
welches das gerade Widerspicl des urspriinglichen bildet: den sittlichen Menschen;
der Egoist ist das Werk der Natur, der sittliche Mensch das der Geschichte;''
p. 119: "Wissen und Wollen dcs Sittlichen, das sittliche Gefuhl und die sittliche
Gesinnung sind das Werk der Gesellschaft."
82 rilK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
showt'd as aj)jK\'irin^ in voluntary organization, the higher form
of " Verkehr," will be recalled as a transition step. " Gemeinsinn "
was set forth as "ennobled egoism." From |)leasure in a common
good he would have effected a transition to pleasure in others'
good ("die Freudc am fremden Gluck" he calls it in one passage).
He would have thus worked out that full identification of the sub-
jective with the objective "Zweck" which is for him the essence
of the moral." Once developed the ethical motives become an
absolute postulate of the existence of society.'
Taking the moral phenomena objectively, he has to do with a
field of unorganized compulsion as contrasted with the organized
compulsion of the state. He distinguishes moral phenomena from
"Sitte" (socially enforced custom) on the one side, and from law
on the other, and he adds "Mode" (fashion) as a further field
capable of investigation by similar methods. A large part of Vol.
II of the Zweck im Recht is devoted to an analysis of the objective
"Zwecke" revealed in two forms of "Sitte," courtesy ("die Hoflich-
keit") and propriety ("der Anstand").
The " Zwecksubject " of the moral is society itself personified. ^
Morality is the egoism of society.'* The moral is the socially
useful or necessary. ^ The existence and welfare of society is the
"Zweck" of all moral norms. ^
It is significant to note in passing that despite the omnipotence
of the " Zw'eck " in all moral affairs, there are some forms of "Sitte "
for w^hich Jhering can find no "Zweck,"^ and w^hich he is com-
' Zweck, Vol. I, p. 60: "vollige Einheit des subjectiven mit dem objectiven
Zweck."
» Ibid., Vol. II, p. 12: "Sie bilden ein absolutes Postulat des Bestehens der
Gesellschaft Und sie sind da."
3 Ibid., p. 156; and p. 104: "Die Gesellschaft bildet das Zwecksubject des
Sittlichen AUe sittlichen Normen sind gesellschaftliche Imperative."
4 Ibid., p. 194.
s Ibid., p. 214: "Sittlich ist das gesellschaftlich Niitzliche oder Nothwen-
dige."
^ Ibid., p. 156: "Das Bestehen und die Wohlfahrt der Gesellschaft ist der
Zweck aller sittlichen Normen."
7 Ibid., pp. 280 £f. So with debts of honor and standards of excessive Uber-
ality; p. 284: "Einen gesellschaftlichen Zweck kann ich bei ihnen nicht ent-
decken." It is worth noting that he also finds points where "der Zwang versagt,"
as with monarchs and juries, Vol. I, p. 329.
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 83
pelled to assign to a realm of the morally indifferent. All through
this part of his discussion there are traces of a predominance of
"Zweck" which is nothing more than the appearance of the world
from his own personal standpoint in it.
I have devoted a great deal of space to this account of Jher-
ing's system, although it would have been easy to state in a page or
two its fundamental propositions. But if I had taken the latter
course I would have only been in a position to answer a theory
with a theory: and that would not be worth while. I want to
show right on his own social facts that his theory of "Zwecke" is
merely a mess of words. It is, if I may so state it, merely one
great elaborate pun upon the word "Zweck," and as a theory
entitled to no more scientific respect than any other pun.
Let us recall his great merits. He broke away from "pure
reason" as a principle of interpretation. He broke away from the
presocial or extra-social individual as a principle of interpretation.
With this he saved himself from falling into the worst crudities
which attend the extension of physical causation to the social
field. (By physical causation I mean that simplified statement of
causation which thus far has been adequate for most interpre-
tations of physical facts.) He brought moral phenomena into a
systematic working relation to legal phenomena, and studied both
in cormection with economic phenomena. He strove to make all
his interpretations in social terms, explaining in this way the
individual's psychic life, both in its egoistic and altruistic phases.
His point of approach in this attempt was, I feel safe in saying,
far superior to that of Spencer's, for he did not merely project a
biological man into an unreal and hazy social world, but studied
a (comparatively speaking) very real social man directly. His
special studies of laws, of morals, and of institutions showed a
very rich insight into social meanings and values, and were indeed
epoch-making.
But — and here is the crucial point for the "Zweck" theory —
his individual man, even after he had socially interpreted him, was
kept in concrete contrast to society wliich was personified in
84 IIIH PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
o[)i)ositi()n to the individual; and his whole theory of social intcr-
j)retalion was made to rest throughout on just this contrast or
opposition.'
The word "Zweck" is made to do duty at the one end for the
individual's pleasure, and at the other end for the social welfare
which society is supposed to seek, for the "Interesse Aller,'"
"das Wohl und Gedeihen der Gesellschaft,"^ "das Bestehen der
Gescllschaft,"'* "das Bestehen und die Wohlfahrt der Gesell-
schaft," "das gesellschaftlich Niitzliche oder Nothwendige."
Between these extremes it stands for a thousand things, among
them two classes to which we have given special attention; sub-
jectively, the four "Hebel" ("Tricbfcdern," "Motive," "Mittel"),
"Lohn," "Zwang," "Pflicht," and "Liebe;" objectively, certain
institutions or forms of organization (some of which appear from
certain points of view as "Zwecksubjectc") and the immediate
aims or objects of these institutions or organizations.
I suggested earlier in this section that Jhering's problem as
he stated it required him to harmonize the "Zwecke" with "Inter-
essen," to harmonize the "Zwecke" and "Interessen" of many
individuals with each other, and to harmonize the subjective with
the objective "Zwecke." We have found nothing in our progress
to show any clear distinction, to say nothing of harmony, between
"Zwecke" and "Interessen;" sometimes our author has used one
word, sometimes the other, without precision. We have found,
however, that the "Zwecke" and "Interessen" of the many indi-
viduals arc brought into harmony by him by a process of sub-
ordinating them to the objective "Zwecke," which seems to depend
at times on the very vagueness of meaning of the words "Zwecke"
and "Interessen" for its strength. We must approach the solu-
tion of all these questions then through a consideration of the extent
of his success in harmonizing the subjective and the objective
"Zwecke." We must ask for the subjective and for the objective
• In Vol. II, p. 157, he says that while the individualist theory has no room
for society the social theory has plenty of room for the individual. Instead of
being a merit this is a defect for his form of social theory, for room for a concrete
individual opposed to society is just what it should not have.
' Zweck, Vol. I, p. 315. 3 Ibid.. Vol. II, p. 103. 4 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 250.
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 85
"Zwecke" respectively what the phenomena are which the words
he uses are intended to indicate, where he finds them, and how he
analyzes them; and in short not merely what the words are which
he fits together, but what the facts are, with a view to seeing
whether through one set of facts the other can be interpreted, or
vice versa. We can best do this on the two groups of "Zwecke"
mentioned in the preceding paragraph, the four "Hebel" as sub-
jective, and the institutions and institutional activity as objective.
The social world presented itself to Jhering as composed of
four great groups of facts. This is not set forth explicitly in his
book, but may easily be discovered by reading between the lines.
First there were the phenomena of commerce, then the phenomena
of voluntary association, then the phenomena of law and the state,
and finally moral phenomena.
Commerce is a field in which the individual seems — to the
ordinary observer commenting on the fact in ordinary speech
forms — to be freely adopting lines of action as he wishes at each
and every step of his course : and in which the structure or organ-
ization of what is done seems to be the free result of this free
choosing. Voluntary organization is a field in which the indi-
vidual, once arranging with other men a policy or line of action,
must, it seems, continue on those lines unless he steps out of the
process altogether; and in which, so long as he continues to par-
ticipate, he shares on one or another basis the resulting satisfactions.
Law and the state show us a field in which the individual seems
to have lost this freedom and to be under compulsion to play the
part he does under penalty of punishment. Moral phenomena
are a field in which compulsion likewise appears to exist, but not
to be exerted in an organized form on the individual.
I wish I could state these four fields of phenomena less super-
ficially, but I cannot, because at bottom Jhering distinguished
them from one another only from the point of view of the indi-
vidual; that is as groups of facts they presented themselves to
him fundamentally on an individual basis.
The phenomena of commerce were the simplest, but even here
it was apparent that they had a meaning or value beyond the
86 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
meanings which the individual participants put into them at the
time of action. The illustration of the railroad as "Zweck" in
contrast to the "Zwecke" ("Interessen") of the individual share-
holders will be recalled. But Jhering held firmly to the position
that this meaning or value was a meaning or value for men, although
it was a meaning which he could not state in terms of the individ-
uals, nor in terms of any conglomeration of individual meanings.
By using a common word, "Zweck," for both the social and the
individual meanings, he was able to approach, in his opinion, to a
coherent statement of the facts. By establishing a principle of
"value received" ("Lohn"), to cover all the essential individual
acts of participation in the process, he felt that he effected the
transition between the individual "Zwecke" and the higher social
"Zweck." And this higher "Zweck," being capable of statement
as detached from the individuals, could be called objective as
opposed to the subjective "Zwecke."
To pass voluntary association for the moment, how was it with
law and the state ? Here there was equally that higher purpose
or meaning, which w^as human, but his "Lohn Zweck" as he had
defined it would not answer to interpret or bridge over the indi-
vidual's relation to it. Compulsion was the prominent fact, and
so compulsion ("Zwang") had to be made itself a "Zweck" for
use as a connecting link.
The phenomena of voluntary association occupied a peculiar
middle place between commerce and the state. The individual
could withdraw; therefore "Lohn" might be taken to explain
his presence. But while he remained in he was identified with
his companions and under a certain regulation; therefore, we had
the application of a simple form of "Zwang," and voluntary organi-
zation was the prototype of the state.
But there were still the moral phenomena in which the propor-
tion of "Lohn" was infinitesimal and the "Zwang" while clearly
present was not applied in organized forms. Neither of these
motives would do. But half-generalized agencies similar to the
other two could nevertheless be found in the moral impulses,
"Pflicht" and "Liebe." A transition to these from "Lohn"
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 87
could be found in the " Gemcinsinn," which appeared under
voluntary association, and the schematism was complete.
What now did Jhering really accomphsh in this way ? Let
us look at "Zwang," where we see his schematism actually in the
making. How can anyone hope to find in "Zwang" as a motive
anything more than a reflection of the social facts of law and the
state which it is assumed to explain ? Even people who think
they know where to find duty and love, or even "Lohn," definitely,
specifically, concretely, as psychic qualities, will hesitate to point
to any spot where "Zwang" exists as a capacity or quality or
possession of the soul. They know plenty of facts of "Zwang,"
actual compulsion and coercion as exercised by some men on others.
Of course. With Jhering himself in early passages "Zwang"
was frequently synonymous with "Strafe" (punishment).' But
"Zwang" as a "Zweck"? It is nowhere to be found. As a
thing in and for itself it is a useless and self-contradictory fiction.
And even as an individualized reflection of the facts, it is useless
and self -contradictory; which appeared in Jhering's own words
when alongside of a system of "Zwang" (or " Verwirklichung")
he put a system of other "Zwecke," in the very state which is inter-
preted as the organization of "Zwang."
But that which is true of "Zwang" is also true of "Lohn," of
"Pflicht," and of "Liebe," however difficult it may be to make this
appear to people much more familiar with these latter words in
such a use, and accustomed by long habit to getting a fairly satis-
factory amount of meaning out of them for everyday needs.
They come from the same source, that is the social activity itself,
whatever prestige of antiquity they possess as words. As Jhering
uses them, they are, so to speak, half individual psychology and
half social institutions. They arc not adequately stated from either
point of view. They do not really state the social facts; they
serve merely as a verbal bridge between two part statements,
which, put together in this way, do not suffice to make a whole.
We can see how this is in the case of "Lohn" by recalling
Jhering's idea that " Lohn " alone can build up a complicated " Ver-
' Zweck, Vol. I, pp. 60, 181.
88 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
ktlir" systim, frt-c from all interference by "Zwang" or any other
motive, a system which precedes the state and is always in great
part indei)endent of it. Now we know perfectly well how arti-
ficial any such extra-legal commercial construction is — I have
already made mention of the defect — but here the point is that
his motive "Lohn," as reflection of " Verkchr" facts in this phase
is likewise artificial and abstract, and that Jhering's dependence
on it as a concrete thing seduced him into his unfortunate state-
ments as to the free and independent development of the "Ver-
kehr" system.
To put this criticism in a more generalized form, "Lohn"
could get nowhere at all by itself; neither could "Zwang," nor
"Pflicht," nor "Licbe." But putting these four together is not
like compounding four forces each of which would get somewhere,
and noting the resultant motion.' It is rather fitting the four
abstractions together again and getting the full picture from which
we started, but getting it without any more advance in interpre-
tation than we had when we started. Just because in the inter-
mediate stages of the process we have imagined the various motives
as concrete possessions of the individuals of which the society is
made up, we cannot say that we have made an advance in inter-
pretation; we have only advanced in the sense that we have satis-
fied some of our kindergarten wonderings about the relations
between a fictitious individual and a fictitious society.
I have already mentioned in footnotes or in the text a number
of inslances in which Jhering uses "ZwTcke" or motives of one
kind or another with exceptional definiteness and concreteness.
I will now call attention to one form of phrasing he uses in which
he erects these concrete "Zwecke" into the motive power, so to
speak, of his whole system. He tells us that the lower "Zwecke"
ine\itably drive the others forth out of themselves (" hervortrei-
ben"), that the "Zwecke" press ("drangen") upward, and that
there is a continuity in "Zweck" evolution.^ I will not accuse
' I mean this merely as a simile which illustrates a practical difiFerence. I
do not mean to pass judgment on the abstractions involved in all statements of
causation.
a Zweck, Vol. I, pp. 57, 74, 76, 98, 237.
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 89
him of attempting to use this evolution deductively in interpreting
society, for his very latest work is freest from any such abuse.
But I am deaUng here not with his special interpretations, but
with his theory of social process, and in this respect the statements
just referred to form a culminating point in his theory, at which its
worthlessness becomes more apparent. They are of a piece with
his attempt to state Hfe in terms of " Zwecke," instead of " Zwecke "
in terms of hfe facts.
I think now it is sufficiently well estabhshed on Jhering's own
work that his distinction between the subjective and the objective
"Zwecke" breaks down, and that instead of reaching an interpre-
tation of society by harmonizing the two he only succeeds in
making it clear that he should never have set up the hard and fast
distinction at all. His objective "Zwecke" are at bottom nothing
more than institutions, social modes of action, poorly stated; had
he confined himself to the study of their meanings, values, functions,
just as they are, in society, just as it is, made up of human beings,
he would have laid the foundations for an adequate interpretation.
His subjective "Zwecke" are little chunks of institutions, variously
generahzed; had he analyzed the psychic process as process he
would again have had a safe field of study. But he did neither of
these things clearly and cleanly. Instead of studying the " Zweck "
process as process, he sought always "Zwecke" as causes, that is,
as anterior facts. He coagulated the individual "Zwecke," so
to speak, and at the same time stewed douTi the social institutions
till he got them into about the same consistency. Then, both
alike being called "Zweck," he felt that he had attained his expla-
nation. And it is clear that with Jhering's "Zweck" theory we
discard also his distinction between the "Zweck" process and the
causal process, which is merely a further gcneraHzation of his
point of view, for the "Zweck" is simply a faulty definition of the
activity itself.
Why is it that with all his painstaking work Jhering reaches ,
only confusion in the end ? Is it because his work has been poor ?
Most decidedly not. His work seems to me of the keenest, broad-
est, and most thorough, granted his presuppositions. His trouble
9© THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
lies (lcei)cT than thai, and it will befog and bemire everyone who
works upon his lines. He set himself a fictitious and hence
insoluble problem. Now it is easy to answer insoluble problems
with stupid answers. But the more brilliant and more powerful
the etTort, the more glaringly confused the result.
Jhering saw before him a world in which given masses of men
were doing given things in given ways. I am quite confident that
he never saw or studied or came into any kind of contact with any
social phenomena that were not of this kind. Close under his
vision were phenomena of law, and especially of Roman law.
But he never learned to posit the simple answerable question:
"How are these masses and groups of men doing these things
in these ways ?" which is the only scientific question. He always
asked: "What is there hidden in these men and in other men
which makes them be doing these things which I, or somebody
else, can easily think they ought not to be wanting to do ?" He
asked: "Why are these men doing these things and not some other
things?" and not, "How are these processes of men w-orking?"
He asked, "Why does a society of men set up certain laws and then
why do these men obey these laws?" and not: "How do these
socially and legally organized men function along ? What are the
various elements of their functioning? And how do these ele-
ments fit into one another and condition one another?" He
might as well have asked why is gold gold and not silver, and why
is silver silver and not gold, instead of simply studying all the gold
and silver phenomena under as many conditions as possible, and
trying scientifically to make out their similarities as distinguished
from their diflferences.
He had an assumed individual to start with. As he progressed
he found himself compelled to assume and personify a society to
set over against this individual. His entire theory consisted in a
desperate struggle to bring his two assumptions into harmonious
relations. And of course the harmony he estabHshed was as ficti-
tious as the assumptions upon which he established it.
If instead of setting the concrete individual over against the
concrete society, he had taken the individual point of view and
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 91
the social point of view merely as points of view, that is, each as
covering the whole range of the social Hfe of men, he would have
had both his individual and his society capable of being broken
down, that is of being analyzed, without the interpolation of ficti-
tious "Zwecke." His personified society with its five compart-
ments (the "Zwecksubjecte") would have become capable of
statement as immediate social fact, without the confusions that
are involved in the distinctions between "Norm" and "Zwang,"
between " Lebensbcdingungen " and " Zwecksubjecte." He would
have had social force and the forms of force and the purposes of
force and the beneficiaries of force, all taken up in one unified
statement, which would have come very much closer than his
Zweck im Recht comes, to an adequate reflection of the
method which he himself used practically in his own social
interpretations.
Section V. Other Illustrations
Feelings are used in so many widely diflfercnt ways tliat a few
more illustrations will be profitable. I will give brief considera-
tion to one or two other general theories of the feelings, then show
in a series of instances how specific feelings are practically used
by investigators in special fields, and finally discuss certain recent
attempts to study feelings and faculties statistically in their guise
of specific properties of living beings.
First to consider is Professor Lester F. Ward. He makes
his whole system rest on the feelings, and indeed he claims that
this part of his work is most highly original. The feelings are the
neglected factor, which he has brought to light. We will not,
however, examine the process of biologic evolution by which he
works them out and gets them ready for action. We will take
instead his classification of the feelings, and ask what good it is
to him, what he is able to "do" with it, for it can have no value
for us in any other way than by being useful. It will appear, I
think, that his classification satisfies crudely his desire to hitch
the social world on to the vital world, but that it serves no other
purpose in his system.
92 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
His classificulion of the feelings (desires, social forces) is as
follows :
Physical Forces (function bodily)
Ontogenetic Forces
Positive, attractive (seeking pleasure)
Negative, protective (avoiding pain)
Phylogenetic Forces
Direct, sexual
Indirect, consanguineal
Spiritual P'orces (function psychic)
Sociogenetic Forces
Moral (seeking the safe and good)
Aesthetic (seeking the beautiful)
Intellectual (seeking the useful and true)'
Professor Ross regards this classification "for the purposes of
philosophy" as "by far the most helpful that has been made,'"
but he objects to it as based too largely on the functions to which
the desires prompt, and says that, "for practical purposes," he
prefers a classification "based more immediately upon the nature
of the desires." Is it not evident that Professor Ward's classifica-
tion is in no sense a classification of desires or forces in his meaning
of the word, but that it is solely and simply a grouping of acti\dtics ?
Certainly this is true of all but the first pair of "forces," pleasure
and pain, and in a way it is true even of them. That is, so far
as they indicate activities they are entitled to a place in such a
table as is in question, but so far as they are regarded as feelings
abstractly, they are not entitled to a separate subdivision in the
table, but should rather be treated as cutting across all the
others.
But if what Ward really gives us is a grouping of activities,
then why posit desires behind them to correspond, and think
thereby to have made progress in explanation ? Certainly when
such desires as he lists cannot be detected independently of their
manifestations, when they can merely be posited as behind those
manifestations, one has no way to test them or to handle them.
I Pure Sociology, p. 261. Compare also Dynamic Sociology, Vol. I, p. 472.
' Tlie Foundations oj Sociology, p. 167.
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 93
If one uses them in interpretation the whole use must be hypotheti-
cal. Of course if the hypothesis is of the kind which gives us aid
in understanding the operations under examination, well and good.
But even with the two hundred pages of Professor Ward's Pure
Sociology, in which he works out a detailed treatment of the three
groups of forces, the ontogenetic, the phylogenetic, and the socio-
genetic, lying before me, I am compelled to say that in my opinion
his hypotheses do nothing of the kind. We have here a sort of
evolutionary history of social man, described along three general
lines, forming the three chapters referred to, headed with the names
of the three groups of "forces." But how the theory of the under-
lying feeling forces helps this history I utterly fail to see. The
history could have been built up just as it is without the theory;
and the alleged "forces" represent merely the principle on which
the facts are classified by Dr. Ward, nothing more.
Another use of desires that is very common is found among the
socialists and other writers who tell us that sex and food desires
are the sole motors of life.' When a man who does this sort of
thing is honest with himself he soon is forced to admit that there
are a lot of other desires which cannot be reduced as such into
one or other of the pair, and then his proposition becomes one to
the effect that these are the two dominant motors and that all
others can be disregarded as negligible in serious study of society.
But we really have in this nothing more than an assertion that
sex and food institutions are the most important institutions of
society and so no progress has been made toward interpretation by
dragging in the desires.
In Westermarck's History of Human Marriage we find some
apt illustrations of the misuse of solidified feelings and instincts.
I shall here, as before, leave on one side the solid and substantial
portions of the book and confine what I have to say to the abuses
of interpretation in the use of the feelings and instincts, with a
view to showing why those factors arc brought in and what they
stand for. My belief is, it is hardly necessary to repeat, that
they are brought in to satisfy the writer's need of systematizing
» A recent example is M. A. Lane, The Level oj Social Motion, pp. 46 ff.
94 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
his work with reference to certain metaphj-sical problems, and
that they stand for ignorance.
At the ver>' beginning Westermarck confesses frankly his
reliance on psychological factors, and adds: "More especially
do I believe that the mere instincts have played a ver\' important
part in the origin of social institutions and rules."* His most
important use of an instinct in interpretation is in connection with
the theor>' of the origin of marriage itself. After showing the
utter lack of proof for the existence of promiscuity among early
human beings, and establishing satisfactorily that upon the emer-
gence of social man to our nsion, marriage existed in the sense of
"a more or less durable connection between male and female,
lasting beyond the mere act of propagation till after the birth of
offspring,'" he sets up an "instinct developed through the power-
ful influence of natural selection,"^ to explain this "natural form
of the sexual relations of man."*
Now the student of bird life, who finds birds pairing with
almost unbroken habit, uses the term instinct to explain the coming
together of two birds, their nest-building, egg-caring, and offspring-
feeding habit. He means by it conduct which, so far as he can
obser\-e, is not built up in its given form during the life-experience
of the indi\-idual. We need not quarrel with his use of the word
"instinct," because it serves to mark off a set of facts he has
obser\'ed ; but even here he should not be too positive in reliance
on it until he has got into intimate touch with the relations of
birds to one another, and knows how much to attribute to that
factor.
But when we come to human society, even in its most primitive
forms, the case is different. It may be perfectiy true that natural
selection will account for the sunival of marr\-ing apes and human
beings, and it is of course possible to use "instinct" to describe
the marn-ing fact in its regularity. But the social problem remains
for explanation just as much as before. We have various sets of
possibilities of lining, \-arious sets of conditions of life, and a large
' The History of Human Marriage, p. 5.
» Ibid., p. 19. 3 Ibid., p. 537. 4 Ibid., p. 70.
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 95
amount of psychic process going on, including influences from
family to family, from larger group to family, and from larger
group to larger group. We cannot safely go back to an inherited
vital habit till these have been taken into account. We want to
know what happens and how, and what variations came and how.
When we are answered by the reply of "instinct," we are told Uttle
more than that the individuals have a tendency to do as they do.
We are merely shown the social action and referred to an individual
tendency alleged to conform to it; but all the group life that we
know to exist is left out of account. I am not saying that Wcster-
marck or anybody else is at present in a position to give a helpful
explanation of the approximate universality of the Httle marriage
groups of early man, and I am of course not attacking him because
he did not do it, but merely showing that his "instinct," although
it defines and states the problem, does not answer it. It is per-
fectly true that such an instinct treated merely as an organized
habit of action occurring in a presocial life and projecting itself
into a social life, without any more modification through social
experience than, say, the manner of using the jaws in eating under-
goes, may be properly emphasized where it can be positively estab-
lished. But it should be treated very tenderly and carefully,
as systematized action and as nothing more ; and when one reaches
any stage of development in which, if indeed it really existed before,
it has been clearly wiped out or transformed, one should then make
a prompt ending with the instinct, even in its clear-cut activity
sense. Moreover, when one remembers the infinite pains that a
naturalist must take with a chick, for example, to make sure
whether he is really studying an activity of prenatal derivation,
or one acquired through imitation and experience, he may well
hesitate long before settling the exact amount of confidence he
will place in a pairing activity, as handed down in fixed form from
one generation of human beings to the next. Indeed it may well
be asked whether such an instinct can properly be regarded as a
factor to be emphasized as "building up" a social institution like
marriage as we know it, or whether it is not rather a factor which
must be broken down, or at least transformed by society,
(/, 11 no I'ROCKSS or GOVERNMENT
before what wc (k-scribc as the social evolution can take its
start.'
Wislermarck does not, however, limit himself to instincts that
have come to us from a])e ancestors. He makes use of instincts
that arise in us through natural selection during social life, and
here his fault is very much more serious. The most striking case
is his explanation of incest and the whole problem of the prohibi-
tion of marriage between kindred. These prohibitions, he insists,
are not social: men do not "avoid incestuous marriages only
because they are taught to do so;'" it is not a case of law, customs,
education, or any other form of "social" control. The repulsion
to marriage between kindred is "instinctive," not in the sense,
however, that the instinct recognizes kinship itself and repulses
it, but that it repulses the "household," those who live closely
together, among whom the kin make the greater proportion.
For such an instinct to develop through natural selection, the
questionable supposition must be made that such marriages of kin
are physically injurious to the offspring; the more questionable
supposition must be made that they are injurious enough to cause
the destruction — in competition at least — of groups that make
such marriages ; a repulsion to the sexually familiar, much stronger
than any mere love of variety, must be assumed as a very common
occurrence over the earth; the possibility that such a repulsion
can get "set" physically — not merely socially — and transmitted
from generation to generation must be assumed ; and its strength
must be made so great that it lasts through life and only under
the most extreme cases can be broken down by any conditions of
living in which tribes and people may be placed.
' In Part II, chaps, ix and xxi, the place material of this kind occupies in group
interpretation will be indicated. It may be observed here, however, that whereas
there arc many pairing animals, the only one that has both pairing and organized
social habits at the same time is probably the beaver. See Letourneau, UEvo-
liUion politique, pp. ii, 12.
' Westcrmarck, op. cit., pp. 319, 544. Westermarck does not indeed say
absolutely that this instinct is of strictly social origin. He thinks (pp. 352, 353)
that a similar instinct may possibly have been of presocial origin, but he has no
reasons to offer, and he goes on to say, "it must necessarily have risen at a stage
when family tics became comparatively strong and children remained with their
parents until the age of puberty or even longer."
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 97
Given all these assumptions little progress has been made
toward explaining why the varying forms of these prohibitions
appear, clan maternal or paternal, phratry, recognized kinship
in many degrees or few; nor why villages miles apart arc some-
times included in the close living together, while huts side by side
are not; nor why indeed the hut and village contrast can some-
times be found in the same tribe at the same time.
To explain these variations, which together make up the whole
of the phenomena to be explained, social factors must be super-
imposed on the alleged "instinct." I have no hesitation in assert-
ing that when we have these social factors completely worked out
we will have our full explanation of all problems of marriage
prohibitions, and the "instinct" will drop away as a useless bit of
verbiage. In other words, when we have marriage interpreted as a
form or set of forms of the ordering or control of interests in human
groups, we will be done with our inquiry. If there is a selection
resting on any real injuriousness in the marriage of kin, it wiU be
a "social selection" not a "natural selection," in the sense in
which Westermarck uses the phrase.'
I might give a long list of feelings which Westermarck appeals
to for help in explanation. For example, polygyny "implies a
\iolation of woman's feehngs"^ — and this even in the face of all
the exceptions. There is an "instinct" of w^omen to select the
I While this matter of exogamy is under view, a method of explaining it which
seems to me particularly naive is worth noting. In the Zeitschrift fur Socialwis-
senschajt, Vol. V, p. 15 (cf. also American Journal oj Sociology, Vol. Ill, p. 756),
Professor W. I. Thomas asserts that since desire weakens for familiar things, since
familiarity breeds contempt, and since love at first sight is the warmest love, there-
fore we may argue specifically that men "like" strange women better than well-
known women; that they gradually get the habit of getting their wives abroad,
and hence that they build up exogamy as a social institution. Of course he does
nothing more than to assume a feeling to fit the fact; in other words he spins the
answer out of the term he selects to start the reasoning with. Since he makes the
marriage institution as a whole rest on the sex instinct, it is fair to point out the
contradiction that at once grows out of his argument. Clearly, the moment exog-
amy was established, the home women, being forbidden, would become infinitely
more desirable than the foreign women from whom the wives are taken. If any
such instinct or feeUng as he assumes could estabUsh exogamy one day it would
smash it to pieces the next.
» The History 0} Human Marriage, p. 495.
98 'nil'. I'KOCESS OF GOVERNMENT
strong nicn.' In I'aniKuay institutions bend under "woman's
stronger passions.'" Jealousy is a pervading motive in building
up institutions.' T'lic sjjring ])rocreation festivals are explained
as survivals of the i)rimilive human "rutting" instinct/ The
"absorbing i)assion for one "—otherwise the "true monogamous
instinct"— is a j)owerful obstacle to polygyny. s "Fraternal
l)encv()lence" is resjwnsible for polyandry under some conditions.*^
The laws of Kurope against divorce took their origin in an "idealis-
tic religious commandment. "^ "Endogamy is due to a want of
symi)athv, and has declined before altruism and religious tolera-
tion."'* In all cases he takes a psychic factor to correspond with one
set of customs, which happens to be the prevading one, and then
says that all customs that do not correspond are due to perversions
of that factor, or to its suppression by some other psychic factor.'
On the other hand when Westermarck finds a feeling or instinct
in current use as an explanation of something or other, and his
broader knowledge of facts enables him to annihilate it, he per-
forms the operation with pleasure and precision. Thus there
is his study of the relation of clothing to the feeling of shame, in
which he reverses the causal order of everyday explanation and
proves that "the modesty which shows itself in covering is not
an instinct in the same sense in which the aversion to incest, for
example, is an instinct;"*" insisting that "it is not the feeling of
shame that has provoked the covering, but the covering that has
provoked the feeling of shame."" Similarly he objects to "Dar-
win's inexplicable aesthetic sense" in sexual selection.
« Tilt History of Human Marriage, p. 256. s Ibid., p. 502.
' Ibid., p. 158. (> Ibid., p. 516.
3 Ibid., p. 132. 7 Ibid., p. 536.
* Ibid., pp. 28 ff. 8 Ibid., p. 546.
0 A similar illustration can be found in Ratzel, Die Erde und das Leben, Vol.
II, p. 669. He says that if two peoples join together to form a state, then " iiber-
nimmt das politisch begabtere die Leitung." But of course the only way he can
know which is "politically more gifted" is by the outcome in fact.
'° Westermarck, op. cit., p. 211.
" Ibid., p. 208. It may be added that that very "desire for self -decoration "
which Westermarck uses in his clothes theory (pp. 165 S.) is itself simply a "soul-
stufT" reflection of the fact of decoration activity, and is manifestly of no use in
explaining the particular forms of decoration adopted.
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 99
Every one of his own interpretations in terms of instinct of
feeling is, however, open to the same demolition, on further
examination, that he has proved for the "shame " feeling. " Shame "
was inserted by others to explain clothing in the same way that the
instinct against marriage with close companions is inserted by
Westermarck. Demolishment is not the special fate of the one
or the other under scientific investigation. It is the sure fate of
all such elements when used as independently existing "causes"
of anything whatever.
It is interesting to note what happens when an investigator
of some special problem, who accepts the instincts and feelings
unhesitatingly as the causes of action, tries to make a general
statement of cause in such terms for a multitude of phenomena all
in the same group. An illuminating case in this respect is that of
Gurewitsch, who has studied that perennial puzzle problem about
the relative priority of needs and division of labor. ' Which came
first, he asks, the needs, or the division of labor by which those
needs are supplied ? And this indeed expands into the wider
problem: Which came first, the needs, or the technical methods
of supplying the needs ? We must understand, of course, not
generalized needs, but specific needs, as a need for milk, for rye
bread, for a meat diet, and so forth.
Now Gurewitsch knows perfectly well the pitfalls of this question.
In discussing that great problem as to how men came to keep domes-
tic herds, for example, he puts the dilemma of the needs in this
way: If early man had plenty of flesh food, then why should he
take the trouble to raise flocks ? If, on the contrary, he did not
have plenty, then what could induce him to spare part of the little
that he needed for immediate use, in the hope of getting ultimate
advantage ? If one is using psychic factors in interpretation, and
faces the difficulty squarely, such insoluble problems as this will
appear on every hand, and indeed nothing else will appear.
I am not going to follow Gurcwitsch's study in details, since
I "Die Entwicklung der menschlichen Bediirfnisse und die sociale Gliederung
der Gesellschaft," Staats- und socialwissenschajtlicJie Forschungen, Vol. XIX,
No. 4.
lOO llli; I'ROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
his interest for us licrc lies not in what he has accomplished, but
in what he has failed to accomplish. After having recognized so
clearly the contradictions of the psychic factors when used in
specific cases, he nevertheless does not have the courage to break
away from them entirely, but when he comes to sum up his theory
he bases it on a hypothetical "striving for power" ("Streben nach
Macht"), seemingly unaware that this motive, or psychic tendency,
or whatever it is, is just as much open to confusions as any of
the "need" elements he has excluded. He sets up a complicated
law' to the elTect that the "development of human needs (and all
social evolution)" depends on "the continuous abolishing and
restoration of the social-economic equilibrium," which in turn
depends on the "Streben nach Macht," this "Streben," finally,
manifesting itself not merely in efiforts to perfect both needs and
labor arrangements necessary to their satisfaction, but also in creat-
ing the social differentiation, which is the basis of the development
of human needs.
In other words, instead of letting his work stand for itself,
he makes it all work out into what we may call an "in-and-in-
breeding" definition, with a hypothetical "Streben nach Macht"
as the vital principle: all because he has not yet succeeded in
weaning himself from the psychic factor — a factor which after
having shown itself ludicrous in every particular use, at last takes
refuge in bare tautology, as its sole safeguard against being com-
pletely discarded.^
Finally, when all is said and done, if one drives out the soul-
stuff, here, there, and everywhere in its specialized forms, from use
in social interpretation, but still leaves it lying around as socially
unassimilated matter, one will most probably sum it all up in
some one broad general principle of self-maintenance. This, for
instance, is what Gumplowicz does when he sets up the "Selbstbe-
hauptungstrieb."^ If one arrives at a motive so general that it
covers all social phenomena, one has at the same moment arrived
' Guri'witsch, op. cii., p. 128.
^ ' Giddings* "consciousness of kind" is in similar case. And so also Kropot-
kin's "social instinct" already referred to.
3 Die sociologiscJie Staatsidee, 2d ed., p. i6i.
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES loi
at a motive which is utterly useless and negligible for purposes
of social interpretation. To talk of a " Selbstbehauptungstrieb "
is merely to indulge in a passing personification of social activity.
It is just as adequate to say that social activities exist as to say they
exist because they strive to exist. The striving for existence cannot
be used anywhere or in any way that will add meaning to the exis-
tence, the activity, the process, considered as fact, apart from the
"Trieb" behind it. The outcome of any process of simplifying a
system of motives into one great dominating motive is the annihila-
tion of the use of motives in interpretation.
One other method of using mental qualities and capacities in
scientific work remains, which I must try briefly to characterize
and criticize. It is that which Francis Galton started, which
Karl Pearson and his associates of Biometrika are laboring with,
and which is illustrated by such an American work as that of
Frederick Adams Woods, on Mental and Moral Heredity in
Royalty. These investigators treat feelings and intellectual capaci-
ties as definite "things,"^ and try to measure them. They seek to
show exactly how they are inherited and what the correlations are
between parents and children, between brothers and sisters, and
between race and race. Galton's interesting propaganda for
eugenics is in part an outgrowth of this work, but I am not con-
cerned here with any attempt to fix the social value of his practical
teaching. The assumptions of the theory and its confusions can
best be shown in the studies made by Pearson or under his direction,
with some additional illustration from Woods. There is some
doubt as to the validity of Pearson's mathematics, but that again
is none of my business here.
Pearson has comparatively smooth sailing with his study of the
correlations^ of physical characteristics in plants and animals, such
1 They may deny that they are dealing with "soul-stuff." I am concerned
however, not with what they say about their position, but with what it actually,
i. e., practically, is.
2 For the technique of the study of correlations see Pearson's Grammar of
Science, 2d ed.; Bowley, Elemetits of Statistics; E. L. Thorndike, An Introduction
to the Theory of Mental and Social Measurements; the article on "Heredity" in
Buck's Reference Handbook of Medical Sciences, or the files of Biometrika.
I02 nil: PROCESS of government
us the number of beans in a pod, the number of ribs in a leaf, the
length of certain bones, or the shape of the skull. So far so good.
Advancing to more complex nuiterial, however, he at once gets
into trouble in two ways.
First studying the color of the hair or eyes, he is able to get
correlations, not of definite facts, but of vaguely judged facts.
Ne-xt, studying fertility in men or in the thoroughbred horse,'
he conducts his investigations on material which is affected in
very important ways by "social" influences, although he has no
way to separate the social from the vital in his material or in his
calculations.
When he comes to the study of the inheritance of mental
qualities or capacities, both of these difficulties are in his way.
He is dealing, not with his material direct, but with very doubtful
judgments about it^" and he has no means whatever of isolating
his vital qualities, or even of making a rough estimate of the propor-
tions in which they appear in his material. An analysis of a
single one of the investigations made under his direction will be
suflicient to show this. The paper, " On the Inheritance of ^Mental
and Moral Characters in Man,"^ does not attempt to measure
parental correlations, but confines itself to fraternal correlations,
that is, to the resemblances of brothers and sisters, and even this
it studies not among adults, but among school children. The statis-
tical material put under examination consists of school-teachers'
reports on some thousands of brother-brother, brother-sister,
or sister-sister pairs, obtained only with great labor and long
delays. The children were classified as to ability into the quick-
intelligent, the intelligent, the slow-intelligent, the slow, the slow-
» Philosophical Transactions, Royal Society of London, Series A 1899.
» I do not mean to contrast his physical measurements with his psychical
judgments as though they were distinct ranges of phenomena. The distinction is
practical. In his skull shapes he has measurements that have scientific value.
In his psychical characters he has no such measurements, or, to put it in terms of
vocabularies, in the first instance he has a word equipment — the millimeter series
— which has practical results; in the other he has no such word equipment —
merely vague general phrases with indefinite meanings.
3 Biometrika, Vol. III.
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 103
dull, and the very dull. A seventh class, the inaccurate erratic was
ignored in the returns. The moral qualities reported on had
regard to vivacity, whether noisy or quiet; assertiveness, whether
self-assertive or shy; introspection, whether self-conscious or unself-
conscious; popularity, whether popular or unpopular; conscien-
tiousness, whether it was keen or dull; and temper, whether quick,
good-natured, or sullen. Handwriting, as an indication of charac-
ter, was also estimated in six degrees, and the head measurements
were taken, as well as certain other physical characters.
To these facts Pearson applied his formulas, and worked out
the correlation in all cases as around 0.5, which is just about what
the correlation for physical characteristics as between brothers
and sisters should be. "There can, I think," he concludes, "be
small doubt that intelligence or ability follows precisely the same
laws of inheritance as general health, and both the same laws as
cephalic index, or any other physical character."'
Now this result was a surprise to him, for he had "expected a
priori to find the home environment largely affecting the resem-
blance in moral qualities of brothers and sisters."^ That is, he
expected the ratio of correlation to show the effect of heredity plus
environment, and so to be unusually large. Since it is not large
he at once draws the inference that home environment counts for
nothing at all. He writes:
We are forced, I think literally forced, to the general conclusion that the
physical and psychical characters in man are inherited within broad lines in
the same manner, and with the same intensity. The average home environ-
ment, the average parental influence is in itself part of the heritage of the stock
and not an extraneous and additional factor emphasizing the resemblance
between children from the same home.^
But now consider. His material is the judgments of school-
teachers upon the children as these are revealed to them in the
school work. When abihty in school is under consideration,
suppose it should happen that two children from one family
were alike ill-fed or over-fed ; suppose they had ahke contracted
some vice; suppose their home surroundings had given them
I Biometrika, Vol. Ill, p. 149. 2 ibid., p. 153. 3 Ibid., p. 156.
I04 Till- I'KOCESS OF GOVERNMENT
interests which make; tlic routine of a British school peculiarly
repulsive to tlum. These things arc not improbable; they are
rather almost inevitable in many instances. Under such con-
ditions a {orrciation mit^ht be shown, but it would certainly not
be a correlation of the kind that Professor Pearson thinks he has
shown. And further than this, the "ability" that he deals with
is merely ability for the particular kind of school work in question,
and not ability in general.
Bad as all this is, we can still allow weight to the teachers'
judgments as to abihty in far greater degree than we can to their
judgments as to the moral quaUties; for these judgments as to
moral characters are peculiarly personal, each such "moral char-
acter" being indeed itself a relation between two or more persons,
and not necessarily equivalent to the relation that would arise
between the given child and some other person. We are, then,
in reality offered statistics not on certain qualities or faculties of
the children, but on certain social judgments about the children,
which may be called, not so much falUble, as partial reflections
of the facts from the \'iew-point of a small comer in the social
mass.
Nor is this all. There is a certain amount of known fact about
children and homes and schools, such as that some children can
learn rapidly of one teacher, when they cannot of another; that
children vary in the ease w'ith which they can be controlled by
different people; that w^hen moved from one home en\ironment
to another, a- considerable change may be worked in their actual
conduct. This fact of the reality of disciphne, how^ever we may
interpret it, is given to us in observation, and Professor Pearson's
denial of the influence of the home environment does not do away
with it. If therefore we should accept his statistical material as
containing real facts about children, we should nevertheless be
compelled to conclude that his ratio of correlation must be re-
duced somewhat to allow for this, and that the correlation of
psychic characters he shows us would therefore be less than the
correlation of physical characters.
However, I cannot allow to Professor Pearson's work even this
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 105
vague degree of validity. The material he has investigated is
strictly social material. It is foolish to talk of "heredity plus
environment," since the environment itself is strictly part of the
material under investigation. One could as fairly conclude from
the results offered us that the whole thing was a showing of en\aron-
ment without heredity, as that it is a showing of heredity without
environment, and indeed one could more fairly conclude thus.'
And this leads us to knowledge of the source of his inferences.
He wrote frankly in the article to which I have referred :
I cannot free myself from the conception that imderlying every psychical
state there is a physical state and from that conception follows at once the con-
clusion that there must be a close association between the succession or the
recurrence of certain psychical states, which is what we judge mental and
moral characteristics by, and an imderlying physical conformation, be it of
brain or liver. ^
And again,
Personally I do not think it desirable to draw very rigid lines between the
physical and psychical, and the present inquiry has much strengthened that
opinion. 3
I Perhaps I can make his defect clearest by a comparison. Suppose he should
wish to establish correlations in bean-poles between their length and height. Sup-
pose he should gather several thousand such poles. Suppose, then, he was unable
to measure them, and instead should set them up in a long row, and put two or
three hundred agricultural laborers at work making estimates of their length and
thickness from a distance of two or three hundred feet, giving each laborer his pro-
portionate share of the poles to report on. Suppose then when he had passed
his statistical material through his mathematical machinery, he should announce
a positive conclusion concerning the correlations of these characteristics in the
poles, and should proceed on the basis of his results to declare, first, that there is
no such thing as a factor of variability among the observers, and second that social
elements in the production of bean-poles not merely had no effect but actually
did not exist. Laughter would be the mildest greeting that his conclusions would
receive. It would be clear enough that his material consisted of man-made bean-
poles "as judged" by the observers. And his correlations might indicate the
"man-making" factor, or might have to do with the judgments rendered, but
hardly could be announced for bean-poles, considered as independently existing.
And yet I venture the assertion that there would not be a tenth of i per cent, as
much vagueness or uncertainty in his bean-pole correlations as there actually is
in his "mental and moral characters."
' Biometrika, Vol. Ill, p. 147. 3 Ibid., p. 153.
io(i TIIL-: I'KOCESS OF GOVERNMENT
These quotations show clearly enough that his conclusions follow
(lirictly from his presuppositions, not from his investigations as
such. I, of course, do not take exception to his conception that
the physical underlies the ])sychical. So long as we hold the
physical and psychical apart by our present terminology, I freely
admit that without such a jjresupposition no systematic investiga-
tion of any social fact is possible. What I am referring to is the
"thing" nature which he gives to these psychical "states," to his
treatment of them as *'soul-stu(T," to his idea that they can be
adefjuately described or defined for scientific purposes by the
same verbal methods we use to define or describe an ear or a thigh-
bone or a skull, to his idea that lumps of mental or moral qualities
can be compared as individual possessions, and can be inherited
as such. I do not think that he off"ers us the slightest proof that
his presupposition is well founded ; and such proof is of course the
whole purpose of his elaborate investigations. The "translation of
correlation into causation,"' so far as the mental factors are con-
cerned, is merely the translation of an untested presupposition
into an unproved conclusion.
It is upon such flimsy foundations as these that Pearson causes
to rest his piteous wailings over the mental and moral degenera-
tion of the British stock. Remember, the question at issue is
not whether there is actually any degeneracy as a social fact in
Great Britain, but whether that degeneracy, assuming it to exist,
rests on — or, better said, is the same thing as — a physical (i. e.,
physically mental and moral) deterioration of the population,
carried on through natural selection, or in other words through
the dying-otT of better grades of the men and women, and the mul-
tiplication of poorer grades.
In his Grammar of Science he puts his fears mildly enough for
him. He says that "if we could remove the drag of the mediocre
elements in ancestry, were it only for a few generations," we
could create a better stock, just as the breeder does. He tells
us that the upper middle class "thinks for the nation" because
it is a better stock, and he asks :
' Grammar of Science, p. 397.
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 107
There is apparent today a want of youthful ability in literature, art, science,
and politics: who can affirm that this dearth — not British only, but French
and German — has not been emphasized by the reduction in the birth rate of
the abler intellectual classes which has taken place since the sixties?'
But in his National Life from the Standpoint of Science, after
restating his theory that the characters of parents, including "their
virtues, their vices, their capabihties, their tempers," are inherited
"in definite amounts," with "a certainty as great as that of any
scientific prediction whatever;"^ after asserting that bad stock
cannot be changed to good, and that education and nurture will
accomplish nothing in modifying the stock; after setting up a
lawof "stagnation," when offspring come equally from superior
and inferior stocks and there is no wastage, he bursts out: "Woe
to the nation which has recruited itself from the weaker and not
from the stronger stocks!" And he asks: "Have we a reserve of
brain power ready to be trained?" and he sadly answers: "I
must confess to feeling that an actual dearth is upon us."^
And all this because Kaffirs and negroes, as a social fact, have
not developed, as a social fact, great complicated social organi-
zations, and because Pearson himself does not recognize either
a Darwin or a Thackeray among his contemporaries.
The presupposition about soul-stuff is all there is to this argu-
ment. It is so trivial it is hardly worth answering. But I have
felt that I could not ignore it here, because it is by far the most
painstaking attempt to apply "scientific" methods, as distinct
from sociological theorizing, to the material, that has yet been
made.'*
The interesting work of Mr. Woods gets its material from
I Ibid., pp. 457, 466, 467.
» National Life from the Standpoint of Science, pp. 14, 16.
ilbid., pp. 29, 42, 57.
4 I might also show the futility of Pearson's point of view by analyzing his
discussions of progress in terms of individualism, socialism, and humanism {Gram-
mar of Science, chap. i.x). These "principles" are put forth as "factors of change"
connected with the principle of the survival of the fittest; they are made to rest
in instincts; they are described as "formulas;" and they are called "motives"
of modern life. It is a frightful confusion. But analysis of such theories of inter-
pretation belongs to the next chapter.
Io8 niK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
sources very dilTercnt from those which Pearson used, but it is
equally faulty in its naive acceptance of the soul-stuff at the begin-
ning "f the investigation. This investigator thinks it "evident that
each human being has certain defmite mental, moral, and physi-
cal characteristics, and that these are due to not more than three
causes — heredity, environment, and free will." Taking the royal
families of Europe, he proposes to find out whether the statistics
reveal mental and moral heredity. He excludes all royal persons
not mentioned in Lippincott's Biographical Dictionary, as such
persons "could not have been very great, at least as regards
outward achievements, which is the standard here employed.'"
One would think that as he wrote these words he would recognize
that achievement is not a proper standard, because the relation
of achievement to character is the very thing under investigation.
But no. His prepossession is too strong. Moreover, he explains
that the basis of estimate is "the adjectives that are used by histo-
rians and biographers."* All of which means that the material
he is investigating is social achievement as accredited to the
individual by ordinary language, and as socially judged. I hardly
need to reiterate the argument that whatever correlations he may
reveal, it still remains on this basis an open question whether the
"what" of the correlation is social influence, or social judgment, or
individual character, or capacity, the very question to which he
purports to be seeking an answer.
It is not to be denied that the similarities in the ratio of physical
heredity with the heredity he estabUshes are interesting, but that
is entirely apart from the fundamental question. Consider how
the case appears when he points out the "relatively large number
of exceptional geniuses" in royalty, and argues that therefore the
"stock" must be superior.^ Think how the work of a royal
personage is flattered; think how many subjects do work which
is put forth in the monarch's name; think what opportunities are
given every scion of a royal house in Hne of succession to fit himself
for some or all of his hfe functions, w^hat compulsion is exercised
on him to fit himself, and how he is enabled to get a maximum of
" Mental and Moral Heredity in Royalty, p. 12. » Ibid., p. 10. 3 Ibid., p. 301.
FEELINGS AND FACULTIES AS CAUSES 109
benefit with a minimum of labor. Can one still safely draw an
inference to "stock" ?
Again, we are told that the "relative absence of great kings
during the last century" indicates that regression has begun. ^
But what value can we give to the inference when we remember the
difference of industrial, national, and pohtical conditions between
the last century and preceding centuries ?
Also, we are told that "for nearly a thousand years the com-
mercial and industrial progress made by both Spain and Portugal
has been directly traceable to the character of its chief heads of
state." ^ But his tabulation of two columns of epithets, one
relating to the state and the other to the ruler, proves nothing.
The inference may be made from either column to the other with
equal propriety.
Wc may sum up Mr. Woods's work by saying that while his
factor of "intellectual" capacity may be reported with some
slight degree of objectivity from the individual standpoint, yet
there is absolutely nothing presented to show that this "capacity"
as such produces the social achievement, while indeed it is most
often inferred from the achievement in a way that gives it no
claim to individual objectivity at all ; on the other hand his "moral "
quahties are "things done" socially, and involve the whole social
situations in them to such a degree that they are even more clearly
worthless for inferences as to the relation between "stock" and
social process than the intellectual factors.
I repeat that I am not denying that men arc in fact distinguished
from one another by epithets relating to their intelligence and
moral qualities ; nor that different adults act differently in situations
which wc describe to ourselves as substantially the same; nor that
this method of statement is useful in its own time and place. What
I am asserting is that the attempt to erect it into a causal interpreta-
tion of society on the basis of fixed individual characters which
can adequately be described and defined apart from the society
they explain, is a hotbed of confusion and irrelevancy; and the
proof is in the works of the men I have studied in this chapter.
I Ibid., p. 302. 3 Ibid., p. 198.
CMAPTKR 11
IDKAS AND IDEALS AS CAUSES
Section I. In Everyday Speech
Wc pass now from the feeling theories to the idea or ideals
theories. As before I do not pretend to be careful about the use
of the i)sych()logical terms. I am not here engaged in any analysis
of intellectual process, nor in any manipulation of any form of
soul-stufl. Leaving psychical "process" on the side for the
time being, I am engaged simply in showing that the use of specific
forms of soul-stutT gives us absolutely no help in interpreting the
doings of social men. Wc shall first of all try to locate the ideas
and ideals in everyday talk, moralizing, and exhortation. Then we
shall consider some theories based on such interpretative material.
Let the stump speaker appear at the old-fashioned Fourth of
July celebration. What does he tell us ? Our forefathers who
created this nation were led by a great ideal of liberty. It was
their highest good. Without it they would never have made this
land what it is. Also they sought independence. Had they not
suffered and labored many long hard years to breathe the air of
freedom, they never would have been "free." Perhaps also
equality was one of the great goals they set before themselves.
It was something they sighed for, bled for, and were willing to
die for. Let us keep the ideals of our forefathers ever in our minds ;
let us inspire ourselves with the same lofty spirit that led them to
their deeds of heroic devotion — and then wc will all live happily
ever afterward.
.\ftcr which, speaker and hearers alike go back to the same old
round of buying and selling, laboring and advantage-seeking.
Did the speech change their methods of dealing with their fellows,
privately or publicly ? Did it move the countr)' fon\ard toward
anything ? Did the renewed assent of all its hearers to its prin-
ciples have any such results ? Do the tens of thousands of speeches
IDEAS AND IDE.-VLS AS CAUSES m
and applaudings and assentings like it have such results? The
stump speaker himself would be the first to laugh at the folly of
the question, give him only time enough to recover from his verbal
self-hj-pnotism.
We know as a matter of fact that the liberty our revolutionary
forefathers sought stood for exemption from a certain number of
burdensome taxes and trade restrictions which were interfering
v\ith their prosperity. We know that formal independence from
England was only sought by them in the last extreme after much
reluctant discussion and as a war measure of doubted value. We
know that any stri\ing after equalit}', as distinct from facts of
existent comparative equahty of condition, cannot be found among
them with the most careful pr}ing ; and that as for the tendency
of the times, it was rather away from than toward equality.'
So much for the talk of the Fourth of July. Let our stump
speaker transfer his acti\'ities to the party campaign meeting.
Listen to him again.
The Republican party has been inspired by glorious ideals;
it set the slaves free; it has ever since been strinng to set ever}'-
body else free; it is the party of patriotism, the party of all the
people, the party of the whole countrv'. It has the monopoly of
the genuine love of countr}\ Because it keeps these ideals upper-
most it alone can be trusted with the nation's government.
Or, in the hall across the way: The Democratic part)' is the
party of the common jjeople. Their welfare is its sole desire.
Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson wrote its immutable
principles across the national firmament. It has ever since been
fighting the t)Tant and the oppressor, in the name of liberty and
'For the contrast between the revolutionary Bills of Rights and the revolu-
tionary constitutions with their suffrage restrictions and disregard of the "great
unrepresented masses," see a neat summarj' in J. B. MacMaster, The Acquisition
of Political, Social, and Industrial Rights of Man in America, pp. 45, 46. If
further testimony is desired, one may take Brjce's thoroughly practical remarks
that "the abstract love of liberty has been a comparatively feeble passion," and
further that "rebellions and revolutions are primarily made not for the sake of
freedom, but in order to get rid of some t\\\ which touches men in a more tender
place than their pride." — Studies in History and Jurisprudence, Vol. II, pp.
24, 25.
113
VlIK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
freedom. The ihnattncd wdfarc of the states is in its keeping.
The rights of the states shall never be surrendered. It has the
monopoly of the genuine love of country. Because it keeps these
ideals uppermost it alone can be trusted with the nation's govern-
ment.
Of course the party meeting is a fact, and an important fact.
Of course the jjarty oratory is part of the party meeting, which is
part of the campaign. So are the torches in the parade. They all
count toward bringing out the ballots on election day. As such
they must not be overlooked.
But when it comes to taking the proclamations of ideas and
ideals, word for word, at the values set forth in the speeches,
what is the use of discussion ? It is a case for laughter.
To rise to a slightly higher level, there is the party platform.
When a great fight is on and the platform takes a definite stand
squarely on the issue, and is backed up with equal strength by the
presidential candidate in his letter of acceptance, the platform
means something. It has meaning with reference to a specific piece
of legislation, a specific line of policy, or a specific administrative
course to which it commits the party. But when it proclaims
or asserts or argues in terms of the party ideals or heirloom phrases,
it is neglected and negligible.
Everyone who reads the newspapers intelligently prior to and
at convention time, and everyone who examines the works of stu-
dents of party problems, is well aware how these platforms are put
together; how on the basis of good old phrases a string of pledges
or indorsements is wrought; how the pull or haul of interested
persons or factions brings about the compromises on the planks;
how the nearer to action the party appears to be, the more care-
fully the decisions are made in terms of what the interested groups
desire and the less pains are taken to adapt the planks even super-
ficially to the old-time verbal tests; how when all is said and done
the only thing that counts is the specific pledge on some issue
that ever\'body is sure to watch, and how it never is safe to be too
certain that even this will count in the event of party \ictory.
Everybody knows how the government moves along much the
IDEAS AND IDEALS AS CAUSES 113
same with one or the other party in power, barring only the specific
issues, definitely fought over in the election. No one is so rash
as to try to show a real change in national tendencies according
as one or the other party takes power; much less in state tendencies;
not by the wildest dreams in city tendencies.
To take an illustration of a kind most unfavorable for my
contention: Does anyone believe that a states'-rights Bryan in
the president's chair could have taken any other course in deal-
ing with the nation-wide beef industry when the time for its con-
trol had arrived than was taken by a republican ? I do not mean
that a different course could not conceivably be taken, nor that
different men with different backgrounds of representation would not
react differently, nor that under a Bryan the day of the issue would
have been exacty the same as under a Roosevelt; nor do I mean
that a Bryan out of office would not announce a policy opposed
to that of a Roosevelt in office. But given the national scope of
the industry and of its customers, given also its foreign trade, given
the emergency for its control which was bound to come through
its own growth and methods, if not in one year then in another,
given presidential representation of the mass of the people on
approximately the same level, could a states'-rights president
have found a different solution from any other president ? The
answer is most decidely. No.
Or again, can anyone who has examined the transportation
business of the United States carefully enough to note its interstate
foundations, expect a Bryan states'-rights plan of government
domination to have a shadow of a hope for success ? The answer
is not in dispute. If "states' rights" presents itself as an ideal,
its weakness and secondary position and trivial importance at
once become apparent. It must yield almost without a struggle."
And then there is the antipathy to a strong executive, which, in
this late stage of its history during which it has been a high and
' Considering the amount of attention that will be given in Part II to the
process of ideals and to ascertaining what is actually meant when ideals are talked
about, I do not need to touch on that phase of the subject here, where I am solely
concerned with demolishing stuff ideals or ideal things as far as concerns their
use as social causes.
n4 Tin; PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
dry, lliin, bloodk-ss, demand— that is, very peculiarly an idea or
ideal— is very instructive. In face of the requirements of govern-
ment it has almost ceased to pretend to amount to anything.
Only as it is pumped full of life by some vigorous specific objection
to a ])arliiiil;ir i)()li( y of llie executive does it now have even the
ai)pearance of nuaning.
Let us next take a look at socialism as an ideal. The socialist
position can be stated, without attempting to allow for various
deviations, about as follows. Present economic conditions are
judged evil and arc to be discarded. In contrast with them an
ideal of a ditTerent arrangement of social life can be set up. To
realize the ideal force will probably be required, but the way to get
the force is by spreading the ideal. Hence propaganda. Mis-
sionaries of socialism, themselves led by the ideal, impart the ideal
to others, and when enough people hold it they will realize it.
The ideal according to such theories is the main thing. It is the
true cause. The truth of this reflection of the socialist position
may be punctuated by recalling the Marxian position that force
has ruled past and still rules present society, but that future
socialistic society will be on a new level, an affair of virtue, not
of force.
Can this ideal-thing, socialism, accomplish any such
work ?
I can liardly hope to carry conviction at this stage for my asser-
tion, but I will say, nevertheless, that it is probable that if every
man, woman, and child in the United States was a confirmed,
inveterate, dyed-in-the-wool idealistic socialist, the progress of
events for the next few years and for the generations to come would
be very little different from what it will be as it is. If the president
and all members of Congress and all governors and state legis-
lators and all mayors and aldermen and minor officials were socia-
lists, our national evolution would be much what it will be anyway.
This is not to say that socialism as a fact is not approaching, nor
is it to say that it is; nor is it to deny that our present socialist
propagandas have any value in the social process. But it is to
say that whatever is to come, the differentiated theory, the socialis-
IDEAS AND IDEALS AS CAUSES 115
tic ideal thing, will not produce it, nor will it even necessarily
state it adequately in advance.*
I can call to witness European governments that contain strong
elements of socialism, and contrast them with those that have
almost no such elements. I can refer to socialistic cities in fact
which are without socialism in theory, and to cities dominated by
theoretical socialism which are yet no more socialistic in fact than
neighboring cities that are not so dominated. I can appeal to
socialistic New Zealand operated by "individualistic" Englishmen
who never heed the socialism ideal. There is Switzerland, too,
teeming with socialistic forms of organization, but in great part
bomb-proof against the propaganda of socialism.^ And to come
nearer home, anyone who likes may see municipal ownership
making great strides while the socialists stand aside and jeer,
knowing not the meaning of step by step nor yet the mechanics of
step after step.
Indi\ddualism is another ideal, mighty indeed, to judge by its
broadsides. Yet the most rabid, cock-sure, intemperate, prosely-
tizing, philosophical individualist I ever knew had the misfortune
to live in Chicago while that city was waging its fight with the
traction companies. At first he debated and made many speeches
against municipal ownership. But, by-and-by, being the possessor
of no traction securities and having lively sympathies with the
"down-trodden" whose salvation, of course, lay in individualism,
he became a municipal-ownership advocate. Soon he was strenu-
ous in proving that municipal ownership was true individuahsm.
After a while the country had railroad rates to regulate, and beef
1 The work of socialistic propaganda as a representative activity will be dis-
cussed in due time. See especially Part II, chap. xix.
2 See, for example, Jesse Macy's interesting account of his personal observa-
tions in Vol. II of the American Journal of Sociology. He contrasts the development
of public ownership with the lack of interest in socialism. As to the general char-
acter of the Swiss he says their predilection for democratic habits appears only in
the mountain cantons, and that there "their democratic ways and so-called demo-
cratic virtues were the only obvious means of subsistence." They are "victims of
democratic habits." For New Zealand see Cockburn, Publications 0} the American
Academy 0} Political and Social Science, No. 264, quoted at length by Ward,
Pure Sociology, p. 562.
uf, mi; l-KOCESS OF GOVERNMENT
to insptH I, iind insunmce companies' managers to tic hand and foot
to legal stakes, and insurance policy-holders to take under its wing,
and my friend was for all these movements. But he was just as
great an individualist still.' Anyone who admires a prestidigital
ideal like that, because of its might in molding the destinies of the
world, may continue to admire, but he is invited to stop reading
this volume right here. It is useless to go on.
1 might say something also about the noisy old anti-ideal — if
the Irrm may be used — the bugaboo, paternalism. Two or three
years ago it would have been worth while. Today the progress of
events has made the task useless. The rout of paternalism from
its seat on the tips of tongues and the points of pens is so thoroughly
accomplished that it is almost admitted.
There is another ideal which may be touched in all reverence
because it has meant so much to those unfortunates who for half
a hundred generations have had so much need of it, yet which has
been as impotent as any of these others in evohing social Hfe. I
mean the ideal of the City of God, of the Kingdom of Heaven on
earth. And it is most useful for our purpose because of the many
centuries and the manifold favorable circumstances which have
been given it in which to show its power. It would be hard, indeed,
for eyes not blinded — or glorified, if one will — by the vision, to
trace the power of this ideal on Christendom's growth. All too
clearly history points to this, that, or the other factor, or set of
factors, as responsible for this, that, or the other softening of the
brutalities of life, but the ideal does not appear among them,
unless sometimes in the courtesy guise of their spokesman.
Is the City of God nearer to us today with our slums and our
wars of million armed men against million than it was two thou-
sand years ago, fifteen hundred years ago, a thousand years ago ?
• Letourncau says {Property, p. 242): "Is it not always seen in critical times
of public danger that the greatest individualists lay claim to the social solidarity
at which they turned up their noses in days of peace and prosperity?" Dicey in
his Law and Puhlk Opinion (p. 301) notes that individualists are very apt indeed
to wander into the wrong camp at times. And Simmel {Ititertiational Monthly t
Vol. V, p. 104) remarks that many thoroughgoing individualists in Germany are
to be found enrolled in the social-democratic party.
IDEAS AND IDEALS AS CAUSES 117
Has there been progress toward the City of God from the days of
the guilds in the Middle Ages down into our factory regime ? Has
the economic ideal of the Gospels implanted itself anywhere, even
with the shghtcst visible results ? The voice of Tolstoi, lifted as
it is for the ideal, speaks all too plain a No. The best the world
has to offer is for Tolstoi lost with the worst in the perspective.
Best and worst alike must, for him, be born again.
These ideals, whatever else they may be, are, as independent
or even semi-independent factors in explaining the social life and
the social progress, just nothing at all. At every point, at every
moment, in any form in which they may seem to be working, they
need themselves more explanation than the phenomena which
they are said to be producing. They are "talk," and at that not
even talk that goes to the point, but talk at long range, talk that
colors, that Hghts up, that pleases aesthetically, that stimulates,
but that for the purposes of close investigation is negligible except
as its exact meaning at any given time and place may be definitely
established. They do not help us to understand. Rather they
obstruct our vision. Whsit trifling meaning they have will appear
only when they are seen from beneath where lie the wheels within
the wheels. On the surface, taken at their own valuation, they are
but illusion.
It seems probable to me that when I enter on detailed criticism
of certain typical works in which ideas and ideals are used as inter-
pretative agents, I shall be answered not so much that I am wrong
in my objections, as that I am falsely attributing to these writers a
meaning for the words idea and ideal, and a process of using them,
which they do not intend: that, in other words, I have merely
knocked down a straw man of my own setting up.
To make it clear that ideals are actually used by scientific
writers in the stuff sense, I desire to give a series of quotations,
picked almost at random. None of the mystic philoso])hcrs of
history of an older generation are on the list and with but a single
exception none such of this generation will be found there.
First, John Stuart Mill: In discussing the logic of the moral
ii8 IIIK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
sciences Mill iinnounccs wiUiout suflicicnt analysis and with no
proof that the " j)redominant and almost paramount" element in
social progression is the state of speculative faculties of mankind,
"inchidinf^ the nature of the beliefs which by any means they have
arrived at, concerning themselves and the world by which they are
surrounded.'" Social existence is only possible by a disciplining
of the ymwerful {)ropensities of human nature, "which consists in
subordinating them to a common system of opinions." Every
great social change "has had for its precurser a great change in
the opinions and modes of thinking of society." The order of
human progression in all respects "will mainly depend on the order
of progression in the intellectual convictions of mankind, that is,
on the law of the successive transformation of human opinions."
In his Representative Government he says, "One person with a
belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only inter-
ests."' In the Political Economy — I have lost the exact reference
— he says: "I regard social schemes as one of the most valuable
elements of human improvement." These views are mild indeed
in their emphasis of the thing-nature of ideals as compared v^dth
some that follow.
Professor W. W. Willoughby, opening a volume on mixed
metaphysics and formal political science, says: "Ideals of right
constitute the essentially active principles in our social and politi-
cal life."3
Professor Henr}^ Carter Adams, excusing to himself his own
vivid appreciation of some of the most substantial elements of
social structure, says: "Individualism is an historic force — and
not a formal argument." Also, " the industrial controversies of our
own times are an endeavor so to reconstruct the code of ethics," etc*
Bluntschli says: "The ideological acceptation of Liberty and
Equality has filled France with ruins and drenched it with blood. "s
I A System of Logic, Book VI, chap, x, sec. 7. The three following quotations
are from the same section.
» Representative Government, New York, 1873, p. 23.
3 Social Justice, p. i.
4 "American Economic Association," Economic Studies, Vol. II, pp. 12, 19, 20.
s Theory oj the State, 2d ed., English translation, p. 6.
IDEAS AND IDEALS AS CAUSES 119
Professor Richard T. Ely says: "The history of ideas is the
history of man From time to time, in the history of man-
kind, an idea of such tremendous import has found acceptance in
the minds and hearts of men that it has been followed by a new era
in the progress of the human race."'
Professor Patten, despite all his materialistic interpretation,
keeps his ideas in the form of good substantial soul-stuff — always
things, not function. He is able to talk of the "ideas that created
the French Revolution" — ideas which came bodily from England,
but which were kept "within proper bounds" in that country by
"the particular conditions surrounding their origin."^ Also he
is able to say of Adam Smith's system of thought, taken concretely:
"But for him the reaction against the new conditions would have
been more severe and England might have missed the opportuni-
ties for development that had been opened up."^ Some of the
democratic ideals, for example, which Professor Patten finds on
hand capable of use in this material way after he has given them
a sort of physical origin are, in an older group, justice, liberty,
equality, and fraternity; and in a newer group, tendencies toward
the referendum, the initiative, and proportional representation,
and the living wage, surplus values, progressive taxation, the single
tax, and the right to live, to work, and to enjoy the fruits of the
earth. 4
Durkheim, despite all the objectivity of his method, is able to
say: "As soon as a fund of representations gets built up, these
become partially autonomous realities which live their own pecu-
liar hfe."s
I Studies of the Evolution of Industrial Society, p. 3.
' Development of English Thought, p. 21.
3 Ibid., p. 243.
4 The Theory of Social Forces, pp. 139, 140.
s Revue de m^taphysique at de morale, 1898, p. 299: "La mati^re premiere
de toute conscience sociale est dtroitement en rapport avec le nombre des ^l^ments
sociaux, la maniere dont ils sont groupes et distribues, etc., c'est ^ dire, avec la
nature du substrat. Mais une fois qu'un premier fond de representations s'est
ainsi constitue, elles deviennent des realites partiellement autonomes qui vivent
d'une vie propre."
I20 'Illi: I'KOCESS OF GOVERNMENT
Ralzcnhofcr, despite his struggle theory, is led along by his
jK)sitivc jnetaphysics to frecjuent assertions such as: "The funda-
mental jmnciples of civilization are the civilizing ideas working
through social politics/" and the importance he gives to the
"Zeitgeist" and other kinds of "Gcistcr" is very great.
Seligman, who has made special study of the materialistic inter-
pretation of history, sets forth as one of the three factors of impor-
tance which will dominate our industrial future, "the existence of
the democratic ideal, "=■ which is "the flower and fruit of all its
forerunners," and he makes the new industrial order depend on
the "emergence of a healthy public opinion." This in his Eco-
nomics. In his essay on the " Economic Interpretation of History, "
we find iiim allowing for "conditions" on the one side, and for
"ideals" on the other, and insisting on the use of both factors in
interpretation. Ideals are for him so solid and substantial that
he can say, "all progress consists in the attempt to realize the
unattainable — the ideal, the morally perfect. "^
Mackenzie in his Introduction to Social Philosophy pictures
society as engaged in the reahzation of certain ideals, with which
he is so well acquainted that he is able to list them and talk dog-
matically about them. Two of these ideals, the aristocratic and
that of individual Uberty, society has been engaged with in the
past. Just at present society is trying to realize a sociaHstic ideal,
but if it is wise it will quit all three and go in for the organic ideal
which is of course the writer's pet. Presumably, unless society
learns all about the organic ideal, sets its jaw, and hurries after it,
it wiW. never arrive. Mackenzie has no difficulty in talking as
follows: "Two of these ideals have already been adopted and to a
large extent embodied in the structure of society We are
now presented with the alternative of adopting one or the other of
the two ideals which remain."^
• Wesen und Zweck der PolUik, Vol. Ill, pp. 396, 397.
' Principles 0} Economics, p. 600.
3 The Economic Interpretation 0} History, Part II, chap, iii, especially pp.
136 fl.
* Introduction to Social Philosophy, pp. 431, 432.
IDEAS AND IDEALS AS CAUSES 121
An elaborate sociological study of the whole group of ideals of
equality has been made by Bougie who has used the method of
Durkheim with inspiration also from Simmel.' Bougie treats
these ideals as a social product, and shows, or aims to show, how
they appear only at particular times and under particular condi-
tions. Then by comparing cases, he strives to determine the
objective factors that condition them, such as the size, homogeneity,
complexity, and organization and density of the societies in which
they exist. That part of his study, whatever its value, does not
concern us here, but rather the fact that it never seems to have
occurred to him to try to get these ideals into thoroughgoing
functioning with the society. Instead he keeps them segregated
in concrete masses. After he has built them up from sociological
factors he grants them a very vigorous power of their own (compare
the quotation from Durkheim above) and indeed attributes to
them the leadership and guidance of modern society. "Equality,
as directing and explaining principle, imposes on our states civil,
juridical, political, and economic reforms, so it seems to us."
" Equality is the soul of the greatest modem revolutions," he says,
but he adds that he does not mean unquahfiedly that the ideal has
the capacity of modifying social forms at its o^vn sweet will. That
is, the ideal has to be built up; it has to work in its environment:
but it is nevertheless a "thing" which can be taken concretely and
applied as a cause of alterations in society. It is the same old
personification or, if the term can be pardoned, thing-ification, of
the psychic factors, despite all the objective method of study,
A most exceptionally entertaining specimen of what can be
done with ideals is Ludwig Stein's conviction that "the anarchists
in three days, given a chance, could destroy what authority has
labored three centuries to construct."^ Side by side with these
may be put an illustration of what the ideal theory can accomplish
in the way of making the world topsy-turvy. It is W. H. Mal-
lock's interesting remark that "socialistic theories merely cause a
I Les idees rgalitaires. The quotations are from p. 239.
' Schmoller's Jahrbiich filr Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirthschajt
im deuischen Reich, Vol. XXVI.
122
'II IK I'ROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
bainn and arlilKial (lisconlent.'" A system of interpretation
which can make discontent, whether barren or not, f )llow a theory
is ripe tor a j)roccss de lunalico inquirendo. But Dr. E. J. Dil-
lon, llie writer on foreign alTairs for the Contemporary Review,
does almost equally well when in his excitement he assures his
readers that " the Russian movement is a revolt, not merely against
this political system or that, but against all authority whatever.'"
And I cannot forbear referring to Benjamin Kidd, whose method
of dragging in the "future" as a factor in social interpretation and
whose principle of projected efficiency reduces the idea of ideals
to a brilliant absurdity.^
I will only mention in addition two naive expressions, swelling
up from the heart, which show right on its native soil the stufif out
of which are made all the ideas and ideals the scientists use. There
is the famous resolution adopted by a mass meeting of the people
of Berlin in 1893 that, "This stupidity must be done away with
that the fellow who hasn't any money and can't find any work
must go hungry in the presence of accumulated stores of provi-
sions."'' We may heartily sympathize with the feelings of the
mass meeting, even while we laugh at its expression. Here, how-
ever, is another case in which we may laugh without being troubled
by our sympathies. When it was proposed to abolish the " party
circle" from the official ballot in Chicago municipal elections,
the Cook County Republican Central Committee seriously con-
sidered resolutions declaring " against any and all measures infring-
ing in such radical manner on the rights and freedom of such an
enormous proportion of population as would be affected by the
' Aristocracy and Evolution, p. 368.
' Contemporary Review, January, 1906, p. 121.
3 "The controlling center of our evolutionary process in our social history is,
in short, not in the present at all, but in the future," Principles oj Western Civili-
tation, p. 6. On the same page he calls this his "new master principle." On
p. 53 he says he has to do with "a struggle in which efficiency in the future is the
determining quality." Cf. also pp. 8, 12, 94.
4 "Die Unvcrnunft muss aus der Welt geschafift werden, dass wer kein Geld
hat and keine Arbeit findet, angesichts aufgehaufifter Vorrathe von Genussmitteln
verhungern miisse."
IDEAS AND IDEALS AS CAUSES 123
proposed change in our electoral system," and further, "that we
regard this attempt .... as an unwarranted move in restraint
of the expression of the pubUc will, and an insulting reflection on
the intelligence of an cnhghtencd constituency and a treacherous
blow to popular Hbcrty."' Funny as this is, it is all of one piece,
so far as its place in the process of social life goes, with the noblest
ideals to which man ever gave utterance.
Section II, Morgan
An interestingly naive case of the use of ideas in social inter-
pretation is to be found in Lewis H. Morgan's Ancient Society, a
work highly valued because of the progress it marked in our
knowledge of the structure of primitive communities. Morgan,
unfortunately, was not content to set forth his results just as he
secured them, but felt called upon to string them together on a set
of "ideas," which, existing in individual brains, and passing
through an evolution there, were supposed to explain the social
doings of the individual.
Perhaps it is going too far to say that the work is strung together
on these "ideas," for they are prominent more in appearance than
in reahty. The "ideas" were inserted now and then when Mor-
gan felt the need of touching up his tale in accordance with the
psychology he commonly apphed to his o^\^l everyday hfe. In
so far they were little passing satisfactions of the wTiter. They
also were appealed to occasionally when his material for direct
interpretation of facts in terms of facts gave out. Here they
served as stop gaps. It is just because his book is so substantial
in its main matter and because its "ideas" are so superficially
attached to it, that I have selected it for examination before taking
up elaborate theories that rest on "ideas" as causes. It reveals
with exceptional simpUcity how little value such "ideas" have
for the student of society.
It may be observed]evcn in the Table of Contents that the writer
was not satisfied to discuss first the growth of inventions and dis-
coveries, next the growth of government, then the growth of the
' Chicago daily papers of December 12, 1906.
,24 THK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
family, and finally the growth of property. It seemed necessary
to him, in place of this matter-of-fact statement, to head his four
parts; "Growth of Intelligence through Inventions and Discoveries,"
" Growth of the Idea of Government," " Growth of the Idea of the
Family," and "(Growth of the Idea of Property." Such a use of
terms, we are all ready to arlmit, does not help the work, and
would hardly ai)i)ear in any book treating of the development of
institutions published today.
In the Introduction we find him saying:
The idea of property has undergone a (similar) growth and development.
Commencing at zero in savagery, the passion for the possession of property,
as the representative of accumulated subsistence, has now become dominant
over the human mind in civilized races.
This is one of the very few cases in which he uses a feeling to
explain anything, but even here his context seems to make it
mean much the same thing to him as an idea. At any rate this idea
or feeling is to him a characteristic, or quahty, or possession of
the individual mind, which spreads and "grows" and brings about
a system of life with which he finds serious fault. Later on he
tells us that "when the intelhgence of man rises to the height of
the great question of the abstract rights of property," then "a
modification of the present order of things may be expected."^
Morgan studied human achievements and found growth. He
studied institutions and found grow^th. He looked upon the
achievements — inventions and discoveries — primarily as ideas;
and he looked upon the institutions in the same way. This led
him to write :
The facts indicate the gradual formation and subsequent development of
certain ideas, passions, and aspirations. Those which hold the most prominent
positions may be generalized as growths of the particular ideas with which they
severally stand connected. Apart from inventions and discoveries they are
the following: I, Subsistence; II, Government; III, Language; IV, The
Family; V, Religion; VI, House Life and Architecture; VII, Property.^
.... The principal institutions of mankind have been developed from a
few primary germs of thought.^
• Ancient Society, p. 342. » Ibid., p. 4.
3 Ibid., p. 17. Cf. p. 302: "The substance of human history is bound up in
the growth of ideas which are wrought out by the people and expressed in their
institutions, usages, inventions, and discoveries."
IDEAS AND IDEALS AS CAUSES 125
As an evolutionist he holds that we have "the same brains"
that our ancestors had, but practicallv he thinks those brains are
soHdified into very different organisms — they have different "ideas"
in them.
Some of the excrescences of modem civilization, such as Mormonism, are
seen to be relics of the old savagism not yet eradicated from the human brain.
We have the same brain, perpetuated by reproduction, which worked in the
skulls of barbarians and savages in by-gone ages; and it has come down to us
laden and saturated with the thoughts, aspirations, and passions, with which
it was busy through the intermediate periods. It is the same brain grown
older and larger with the experience of the ages. These outcrops of barbarism
are so many revelations of its ancient proclivities. They are explainable as a
species of mental atavism.'
The "few germs of thought" which explain our institutions
"have been guided by a natural logic which formed an essential
attribute of the brain itself."^ Apphed to the gens, we are told
that it was "the idea of a gens" that developed, and that "it came
into being upon three principal conceptions, namely, the bond of
kin, a pure hneage through descent in the female hne, and non-
intermarriage in the gens."^ Surely such "conceptions" as these
regarded as existing before the gens and as being responsible for
its appearance must have stretched our forefathers' reasoning
power very materially. Except in degree they are, however, not
worse than any other stuff ideas used as causes.
A httle later we find him discussing a tribe which "had not
advanced far enough in a knowledge of government to develop
the idea of a chief executive magistrate."'* It is no wonder. We
have plenty of chief executive magistrates in this world, but all
the political scientists put together have not managed to work out
a lucid, coherent "idea" of that official even yet. Montesquieu
thought he had it, and our forefathers thought they had it when
they drafted our American federal Constitution. And every day's
I Ibid., p. 61. Cf. also p. 255, where the "few primary germs of thought"
are represented as "working upon primary human necessities" to produce vast
results.
' Ibid., p. 61. Cf. also p. 266, where a similar phrase reappears.
3 Ibid., p. 69. 4 Ibid., p. 119.
126 nil; I'kocESS of government
ti'U'granis in the newspapers may be said to prove conclusively
how wrong they ail were.
ProccTcling, Morj^an takes up the development of the locality
unit of government as the successor of the clan unit. He discusses
the conditions under which it appeared,' but in this he regards
himself as merely indicating the background. Greek and Roman
brain was necessary for it and was its real cause. "Anterior to
cxjH'riencc, a township, as the unit of a political system, was
abstruse enough to tax the Greeks and Romans to the depths of
their capacities before the conception was formed and set in prac-
tical oi)eration."' Also of the same development he says that
"such a change would become possible only through a conviction
that the gens could not be made to yield such a form of government
as their advanced condition demanded. "^ This last sentence has
a meaning which is fairly well defined, if we take it to sum up in
loose words the general tendency of the times. Taken as an
explanation of what happened, rather than as a cursory descrip-
tion, its meaninglessness is at once apparent.
Morgan also regards the transition from his consanguine to his
punaluan family as "produced by the gradual exclusion of own
brothers and sisters from the marriage relation, the evils of which
could not forever escape human observation,"'* this being a case
of his use of the "idea," not for self-satisfaction but for the cover-
ing up of ignorance as to causes. It is clear he cannot prove that
such an idea existed, and equally clear that it is nothing more
than the apphcation of his o\^^l opinion of the meaning of the
change to the minds of the actors. The same explanation is
repeated thus: "It is a fair inference that the punaluan custom
worked its way into general adoption through a discover)' of its
beneficial influence."^ This assertion, it may be added, is almost
his only argument in proof of the existence of such a family, beyond
his sweeping inference from his "Turanian system of consan-
guinity." Again we find him indicating what might have happened
• Ancient Society, pp. 268, 311, 338, 339, 360, 361.
' Ibid., p. 218. 4 Ibid., p. 424.
3 Ibid., p. 322. s Ibid., 503.
IDEAS AND IDEALS AS CAUSES 127
in Rome "had the Roman people wished to create a democratic
state. "^ Also in connection with the patricians of Rome, he
discusses " the two classes of citizens thus deliberately and unneces-
sarily created by affirmative legislation."^
These illustrations have had to do with Morgan's use of the
growth of specific ideas in his explanations. A few quotations
may be added to show his use of an expanding intellectual faculty
or capacity. He speaks of the "feebleness of the power of abstract
reasoning"^ in early society. Talking of confederacies of Indian
tribes, he says: "Wherever a confederacy was formed it would of
itself evince the superior intelligence of the people, "'^ a pccuharly
felicitous phrase, for our purposes, as indicating clearly the kind
of material out of which the alleged "superior intelligence" in
sociological theory is made. Again: "As the confederacy was
the ultimate stage of organization among the American aborigines
its existence would be expected in the most intelligent tribes only. "5
Proofs of the existence of such intelhgence apart from the very facts
the intelhgence is summoned to explain, are, of course, not given,
for the excellent reason that they cannot be given, any more here
than elsewhere. Again: "An assembly of the people (Greece),
with the right to adopt or reject public measures, would e\ince an
amount of progress in intelhgence and knowledge beyond the
Iroquois."^ These illustrations are sufficient for our purpose.
If I simply wanted to contend that these ideas and capacities
were wrong in their particular uses, it would be foohsh and waste-
ful of time to hst them in this way. Instead of that, my purpose
is, as already indicated, to show how utterly mistaken any such
use of similar elements in interpretation is. What do all these
explanations add to our comprehension of the evolution Morgan
is discussing ? I think any impartial reader will answer. Nothing.
Some of them clearly are made to order to fit the facts. Others
are bare reflections of the facts in gcnerahzed, or "psychic,"
terms. Others again can hardly be characterized as anything
I Ibid., p. 336. 4 Ibid., p. 123.
3 Ibid., p. 339. s Ibid., p. 126.
3 Ibid., p. 41. 6 Ibid., p. 24$.
128 riii; I'KOCESS of government
more than (ircumlocutions, as, for example, when "the idea of
j)r()iKrty" is used instead of simple "property."
Morgan's real contributions to our knowledge of ancient society
are of an entirely dilTerent nature. He worked out the main char-
acteristics of the clan as a social organization, and first identified
the r.reek and Roman gens with the American Indian clan. He
analyzed the nature of the transition from tribally organized to
territorially organized societies. He called attention to the con-
nection between property and tribal evolution on the one hand, and
between property and marriage evolution on the other hand. He
made the first great study of systems of consanguinity. He
studied social evolution in terms of technical achievements and of
the utilization of the physical environment. He gave a prominent
place to such factors as the "comminghng of diverse stocks, superi-
ority of subsistence, and advantage of position."' Such investi-
gations as these have entitled him to front rank among American
investigators of society. But what of his "ideas" and other
psychic qualities and faculties ? They are long since forgotten
because they are utterly useless. Only when he could not lay
his hands on substantial factors for his interpretations, or when
perchance he wished to nail down his conclusions upon the indi-
vidual man as he conceived him to be, did he have recourse to
them.'
As with Morgan so is it with every other writer whD uses such
factors; only, it is rare in good scientific work that the naivety of
the procedure is so manifest.
Section III. Giddings
Professor Franklin H. Giddings has done much careful work
in tile interpretation of society on what he calls the "objective"
■ Ancient Society, p. 39.
' It is not improbable that Morgan's reliance on "ideas" and conceptions in
times of difficulty helped to seduce him into building up his fictitious consanguine
and punaluan families out of systems of consanguinity. If this is true it adds
force to the preceding criticism, for it makes ven,' clear indeed the lurking peril
of such factors. The errors he fell into here have called upon his head whole
volumes of sarcastic criticisms, which have bhnded many eyes to the splendid
achievements he secured when dealing directly and unwaveringly with facts.
IDEAS AND IDEALS AS CAUSES 129
side — that is in terms of physical and vital facts introduced into
sociology as such. He holds, however, that in our own noble
times the objective process has become subordinated— though of
course still underlying everything — and that now society subjec-
tively decides what it wants itself to be and sets forth to accomphsh
its aim. He does not confine himself to generahties about the
social will, but endeavors to locate these predominant factors of
present-day social causation in certain ideals which he thinks
he detects controUing our social life.
Ideals for Giddings are ideas touched up with emotion — the
exact definition is utterly indifferent for our purpose. The great
ideals which, in the latest presentation of his theory, he finds
dominant — I merely mention them now to indicate what he means
— are unity, liberty, and equality. They are stratified on top of
one another in that order.
We are not now concerned with his "objective" interpretation
of society. Neither are we concerned with his "objective" inter-
pretation of the ideals themselves in terms of the character of the
environment and the composition of the population. The thing
that does concern us is that these ideals, once formed, are for him
exceedingly concrete positive things, which can be precisely desig-
nated-by the words used to name them — such as the three given
above — and which operate directly and by their own force on social
action, thereby producing social institutions.
It is our problem now to see whether he actually shows that
these ideals have any such claim to independent operation. I
shall quote a series of passages from his works, giving them in
chronological order to show his development. In all of them the
background of the objective process must be assumed. That
does not explain away the "thing-ness" of the ideals; it rather
serves to emphasize it.
"A community continually endeavors to perfect its type in
accordance with the prevailing conception of an ideal good."'
This position furnishes the basis for Giddings' "first law of social
choices," in which he arranges the series of ideal goods that have
' Principles 0} Sociology, 1896, pp. 407, 408.
i.^o 'II ri; TROCKSS of government
l)i-rn inlliKnlial, us (i) those of [KTSonal force; (2) utilitarian
ideals; (3) integrity, and (4) self-realization.
For the conservation and [)crfection of social relations and for the realization
of ideals, the social mind creates institutions.'
The third stage of civic evolution brings with it as a characteristic product
an influence that counteracts the dangers which have been described, and offers
to the community an assurance of continued stability and progress. That
influence is a growing ethical spirit, and the formation of the highest mode of
like-mindedncss, namely the ethical.'
It is the rational-ethical consciousness that maintains social cohesion in a
progressive democracy.^
Civilization we found to be a product of the passion for homogeneity, and
its policies to be expressions of that passion.*
The individualities of nations are a product of their ideals rather than of
their institutions. '
The creation of ideals is one of the highest activities of the human mind.^
When the conditions favorable to rational social choice exist the choice
itself is determined by the scale of social values.''
The social values in his scale are made to correspond to four
types of character which Giddings sets up, the forceful, the con-
vivial, the austere, and the rationally conscientious. These types
correspond with the four varieties of influential ideals mentioned
in connection with the quotation above from the Principles of
Sociology. It may be noted in passing that the only way Giddings
is able to indicate how these types of character may be studied is
through analysis of the ver}' social facts they are set up to explain.*
The significance of this state of affairs is CAident.
The most immediate stimuli and the most important of modem social life
are products of past responses to yet earlier stimuli Of all the stimuli
that move men to mighty and glorious co-operation none can be compared
' The Theory of Socialization, 1897, P- 33-
» Elements 0} Sociology, 1898, p. 320.
3 Ibid., p. 321.
♦ Ibid., p. 347. See also p. 283.
s Democracy and Empire, 1900, pp. 315, 316.
6 Ibid., p. 339.
7 Inductive Sociology, 1901, p. 177.
8 Ibid., p. 84.
IDEAS AND IDEALS AS CAUSES 131
with a great ideal. The ideals of liberty, of freedom, and of enlightenment
lift men today in gigantic waves of collective effort like resistless tides of the
sea.'
The Declaration of Independence was an ideal and nothing more. The
federal Constitution was a stupendous ideal.'
Again, placing ideals at the top of a series of which the lower
terms are danger, menace, bribes, and the strong personality, he
says: "These new and higher stimuli are ideals and it is these
that presently become a factor of chief importance in the higher
forms of social causation. "^
Following an explanation that "social ideals arise in the minds
of exceptional individuals," are communicated to others, and
spread until they are generally accepted, he says that they "have
the power to call forth persistent effort to transform the external
order of things into a realization of the ideal."'*
A number of passages have to do with the possibility of organ-
izing men by great ideals, when nothing else will serve to bind them
together, and he even convinces himself that while democracy is
normally not possible for a heterogeneous population, it can be
made possible "if there is a practically universal belief in the
superiority of democratic forms "^ — which is a most perfect example
of begging the question.
It is after this progress has been made that Giddings, abandon-
ing at least for immediate use his earlier series of ideals, sets up
the series of three ideals, which he believes have dominated the
history of developed society — the three ideals mentioned at the
beginning of this section — unity, liberty, and equality.^ He
shows how first it was necessary to bind the society together, and
how the people knew this, and how they thereupon decided that
unity was their greatest need, and made this their ideal, and with
a view to achieving it took various and sundry measures. By-and-
by they discovered that they had been too successful by half, that
they had got more unity than they needed, and so they set their
' The Theory of Social Causation, "Publications of the American Economic
Association," Series III, Vol. V, No. 2, 1904, p. 149.
» Ibid., p. 149. 4 Ibid., p. 164. ^ Ibid., pp. 164-70.
3 Ibid., p. 163. s Ibid., p. 168.
132 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
bniins iit work under high jirissurc- and hit upon liberty as a better
ideal to chase. All things social thereupon had to be molded on
the pattern of liberty, till liberty got too irritating, in fact, wherc-
uj)on another mental commotion produced Minerva-like the ideal of
tMjuality, which nowadays everybody who is not hopelessly anti-
quated is pursuing just as hard and fast as he can. Professor
Giddings does not write so irreverently about his ideals, of course,
but 1 am positive I am doing him no essential injustice, in stating
the theory in that way. One or two later quotations remain to be
given. In presenting a series of eight forms of social organization
he says:
Society of the eighth type exists where a population collectively responds
to certain great ideals that, by united efforts, it strives to realize. Compre-
hension of mind by mind, confidence, fidelity; and an altruistic spirit of social
service are the social bonds. The social type is the Idealistic. '
In a discussion of sovereignty, Professor Giddings sets forth
four well-defined modes of sovereignty, four well-defined modes
of government, and four well-defined "groups of theories or tend-
encies of speculation on the nature and scope of government,"
He says :
I am concerned only to point out certain conditions under which men do
as a matter of fact make such assumptions as those which the great political
theorists have made and do in fact institute one or another of the forms of
government here described in approximate accordance with their theoretical
assumptions.'
From the same article the following sentences also are worth
quoting:
Next to theories of rehgious obhgation theories of the rightful forms of
government and of the rightful scope of governmental power have most pro-
foundly affected human feeUng To the extent that these theories are
formulas of feeling rather than of speculation there is a certain presumption
that they are true products and expressions of some great collective need. -J
In Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, Giddings finds three well-
known theories to go with three of his four modes of sovereignty
> American Journal oj Sociology, Vol. X (1904), p. 169.
' Political Science Quarterly, March, 1906, p. 21.
i Ibid., p. 3.
IDEAS AND roEALS AS CAUSES 133
and modes of government, but for the fourth theory he is compelled
to drag up from an obscurity, which he himself admits, Thomas
Paine's The Rights 0} Man. This he puts at the basis of the
American type of government as we had it in our first centun,' of
history. Surely this is forcing things a good deal in the hunt for
ideal causes. And one may properly ask why is it if the three
great ideals, unity, liberty, and equality, are actually dominating
history, that four forms of government are discoverable ; for surely
in government those three great ideals would make themselves
most vividly and characteristically felt. But that is incidental.
Now with regard to this whole theoretical position, if Giddings
were merely indulging in enthusiastic talk, or in some form of
propaganda or appeal to the emotions, one would have no reason-
able criticism to bring against him because of his choice of language ;
that would be his affair. But it is scientific work he is busying
himself with.
If he were merely using his ideals to indicate general tendencies
of social development one could, again, accept them providing one
thought they fairly reflected the tendencies. But it is a theory' of
social causation which he is setting forth, and his ideals are definite,
concrete factors in society which can be discovered all by them-
selves, and when discovered can be used to explain social activities
and social institutions.
Here it is necessary to hold the man who uses them to strict
account. It is necessary to make him establish his causes, either
by holding them up to the light by themselves, apart from the things
they explain, or, if they are frankly put forth as hypothetical, after
the fashion of the once-flourishing chemical atom, by working
them through clearly and cleanly in typical cases to which they are
applicable.
Now how does Giddings get his ideals ? That is the first
question we must face. Unless I am completely blind to the truth,
he gets them in one of two ways. Either (i) he takes them up as
a sort of essence or general characteristic or tendency of the very
facts which they are used to explain, or else (2) he gets them from
the talk of the people, from their professions of faith, from their
134 nil: PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
own cxphiiiiilions antl defense of what they are doing and in general
from their system of conversation.
1 1 is not of necessity the case that there will be any identity
between results secured in these two different ways. That would
be something to prove, not to assume. If the latter way was
frankly followed, then it is not of necessity true that the talk and
conversation relied on is what it purports to be; we have no way
of knowing in advance that it, so to speak, correctly states itself.
That again would be something to prove, not to assume. But
passing these difTicultics for the moment, and confining our atten-
tion to the series of ideals, unity, liberty, equality, let us try to see
whether, if speech habits are the source from which they are
gathered, they are actually to be found there in the way it would
be necessary to find them to justify Giddings' use of them.
Unity, to begin with, has rarely, if ever, been a national passion
or enthusiasm. Mind, I do not mean that great nationahzing
movements are not found. I mean one does not actually find the
unity ideal as Giddings himself describes it, where hterally "the
passion to make all men within the community more alike begins
to be consciously felt and to make itself a power," where literally
"the passion for homogeneity seizes upon the whole population."*
Liberty, no doubt, has been such a passion — it has turned the
dictionaries loose in floods — at the time of social action to which
it is made to correspond. Equality has also been such a passion,
but unfortunately it has been a passion linked ^vith that of Uberty,
at jx'riods when the tendencies were toward hberty facts (assuming
the general correctness of Giddings' analysis), instead of toward
equality facts. The future according to Giddings must belong
to equality, but it would be ver}' difficult indeed to find any impas-
sioned adoration of equahty in and for itself, among the peoples
who are making the fonvard march in that direction.
Where then does Giddings stand ? So far as he is gi^'ing us
general tendency of fact under the name of an ideal, he is not frank
about it and he is confusing us. So far as he is using the people's
adorations as his source of ideals the adorations do not square at
« American Economic Associction, III, Vol. V, No. 2, pp. 165, 166.
IDEAS AND IDEALS AS CAUSES 135
all with the system, either at the beginning or at the end, while
in the middle there is confusion. Besides that there is no test of
them to see if they really are just what ihcy pretend to be.
How can one take this seriously for social causation ?
How can one be satisfied with a theory that comes down hard
on the federal Constitution as primarily a great national ideal, in
the very face of the struggles and quarrels of the constitutional
convention for the maintenance of pressing social interests ?
How can one have confidence in the ideal as such a cause when
he knows that in all established social creed organizations, a formal
adherence is all that is demanded, and this the more inevitably
the larger and stronger the organization becomes ?
I cannot see.
I will very frankly admit that when an investigator starts out
with dead external factors in his interpretation, when he is "objec-
tive " to the limit on one side of his work, he will inevitably reach a
point, if he is honest with himself, when the "objective" will be
recognized by him as not sufficing, when he will be compelled to
set up something more "human," something "subjective" to
carry his interpretation farther forward.' But that is primarily a
defect of the hard objectivity with which the start has been made ;
and whether it is a defect or not — I pass that question here — it will
be no excuse for setting up arbitrary, artificial, unreal subjective
factors at the upper end of the interpretation. Suppose something
is needed to offset the objective interpretation : it will have to be
something real, something that will stand a test of examination,
something that can be frank about its origin, and definite in its
operation. Professor Giddings' ideals answer none of these
requirements. They must be shown the door forthwith.
His ideals, even if given the benefit of being hypothetical causes,
cannot for an instant be compared with the atoms in the older
chemistry. Rather they are color flashes on the surface of the
materials with which the student of society must deal. They are
" Cf. Elements 0} Sociology, p. 350: "Society is not a purely mechanical pro-
duct of physical evolution. To a great extent it is an intended product of psycho-
logical evolution."
i/) riiK rkucicss of government
mere surface forms or ai)i)<arances, better, if the issue is sharply
drawn, to forget than to attempt to manipulate in social interpre-
tation.
Tiic people believe that the king's touch cures disease. Shall
wc- base pathology on the belief in the touch ?
Mumbo-Jumbo keeps order in the African village. Shall we
found a lluory of the state on the small boy's and the woman's
fear of the monster?
The rain-maker makes his magic. The rain falls. The people
lie i)rone in admiration of the supernatural power. Have we here
the foundation of meteorology ?
The ideals must count. There is no doubt about it. They are
involved in the social fact. But they must be properly stated at
their real value, not at their own allegation as to that value. They
must count for just what they are — now this, now that, now the
other thing. They must count honestly. The sociological witch-
craft must be abandoned.
Section IV. Dicey
For the purpose of testing the value of the theory of ideas in
social interpretation, I know of no work more instructive than the
recent lectures on the relation between law and pubhc opinion in
England by the distinguished Oxford lawyer and publicist, Albert
Venn Dicey.' Certainly one could nDt approach the theory on
ground more favorable to it. The author is, to start with, an
authority of the highest rank on the material which he is discuss-
ing, namely the laws of England. Next, he is sincerely convinced
that ideas govern history. Finally he has made it deliberately his
special study to discover the variety of ideas — here legislative public
opinion — which govern the law-making of England, and to trace
the process through all its stages.
I shall attempt to show that Dicey himself does not succeed in
establishing clearly what these ideas are, that he produces no proof
that they have causal working except by citing certain imperfect,
' A. y. Dicey, Lectures on tite Relation between Law and Public Opinion in
England during the Nineteenth Century, London, 1905.
IDEAS AND IDE.ALS AS CAUSES 137
inconclusive, and indeed almost irrelevant sequences of events,
that his very statements about the ideas are full of inconsistencies
even when most courteously examined, and finally that the trouble
lies not in Dicey's imperfect investigation, but in his insoluble
problem.
I have no quarrel with the three periods of Enghsh law-making
which Dicey finds in the last century : the first a period of compara-
tive quiescence; the second of law-making which can fairly well
be denoted by the term individuaUstic; the third of law-making
which can fairly well be called coUectivistic. It would, of course,
be absurd for me to criticize in this field without a vastly more
detailed knowledge of the material than I possess. I can assume
that the laws do group themselves in these three groups, concretely.
This is not to admit that the terms used for the last two periods,
with all their varied impHcations, are the best terms, nor that the
analysis has been pushed as deep as is desirable, but simply to
accept the three groups concretely, while pursuing the inquiry
as to whether Dicey has produced idea systems as a matter of fact,
to correspond.
I wish to make the further prehminary remark that to anyone
who is thinking solely of the substance of Dicey's grouping of the
laws, the passages I shall quote for attack will open against me a
charge of verbal quibbhng. Such a charge ■v^^ll not be justified
for two reasons: first, that it is the causal operation of the ideas
that I am investigating; and second, that it is this very causal
relation that Dicey sets before us as his fundamental thesis.
Dicey holds that in England in the nineteenth century public
opinion has been the great force in producing the laws. He does
not mean by this merely that the laws have been the laws the
"people" or their delegated rulers wanted; but that a systematic
theory, a definite type of thought, has been behind the laws and
that as it has changed the character of the laws has changed. It
is not public opinion in general, but "legislative public opinion"
that has thus prevailed. This legislative public opinion is in a
way a branch of general pubHc opinion, i. e., the general thought-
system of the times, and in a way also it is influenced by "circum-
138 rilK I'F<OCESS OF GOVERNMENT
stances." H will Ix- impossible fairly to represent the shadings
of his theory without c()|)ious ciuotations.
He begins by declaring that English law is "the work of per-
manent currents of opinion.'" The absence of legislation as well
as legislation itself may depend on such "varying currents of
public ()i)inion."' It is not always and everywhere that such
l)ublic opinion governs. It has not been true of England in earlier
centuries. It is not true in nearly so great a degree of either France
or the United States as of England. The theory is deliberately
confmed to England in the nineteenth century.^ In some coun-
tries no opinion proper with regard to change of laws may exist.
That is where custom rules; habits, not thoughts arc dominant.
In other countries the opinion which does exist may not be public
opinion: it is the opinion of a small number of people or even of
a single individual. In still others there may be lack of a legisla-
tive organ which adequately responds to the sentiment of the age;
the United States congress is, he thinks, defective in this respect.^
Then he gives us a little touch of psychological apology in meet-
ing the objection that it is "interest," not opinion, that governs.
Opinion, he retorts, quoting Hume, always governs interest. The
citizens of England arc not "reckless, governed by mere interest;"
they are not "recklessly selfish;" they look out for their neighbors
and for their state as well as for themselves. When they seem to
be pursuing purely selfish ends, "the explanation of this conduct
will be found nine times out of ten to be that men come easily to
believe that arrangements agreeable to themselves are beneficial to
others. "5 Opinion is master over "callous selfishness." It is
not "exceptional selfishness" but some "intellectual delusion
unconsciously created through the bias of sinister interest" that
makes men go wrong. So heroic an adherence does he give to
this proposition that he is able to say of the slavery struggle in the
United States:
The faith in slavery was a delusion: but a delusion, however largely the
result of self-interest, is still an intellectual error, and a different thing from
' Dicey, op. cU., Preface, p. vii. 3 Ibid., pp. i, 8. s Ibid., p. 14.
» Ibid., p. I. 4 Ibid., pp. 3, 9.
IDEAS AND IDEALS AS CAUSES 139
callous selfishness. It is at any rate an opinion. In the case therefore, of
the southerners who resisted the passing of any law for the abolition of slavery,
as in all similar instances, we are justified in saying that it is at bottom
opinion which controls legislation.'
The weakness of this justification of the proposition that
opinion governs the world will at once be apparent. Because
one has an antipathy to "callous-selfishness" theories, that is no
justification for setting up idea theories. Because self-seeking
seems inev-itably callous and reckless, and so unpleasant, that is no
proof of the power of ideas. Dicey's attitude is like that of the
self-styled individuaHst, who, when driven into some practical
corner where theory fails to square with fact, cries out in agony:
"But what else can I be ? I can't be a sociaHst," utterly obH\'ious
to the fact that plain common-sense is a good substitute for both.
"I can't be so selfish," says Dicey. "I must stand firm for ideas.'"
Coming to closer quarters with this legislative pubHc opinion,
the first definition of it we get is that it is "merely a short way of
describing the behef or conviction prevalent in a given society that
particular laws are beneficial and therefore ought to be maintained,
or that they are harmful and therefore ought to be modified or
repealed. "3 This is exceedingly vague. It might be taken to
mean opinion on each law for itself without regard to any others.
But really it means much more than this. A sentence or two later
it becomes "the speculative views held by the mass of the people
as to the alteration or improvement of their institutions." Again
it becomes the opinion "held by the majority of those citizens who
at a given moment have taken an effective part in pubHc Hfc."''
It is, as has been said, "law-making or legislative pubfic opin-
ion "s which counts, and of this only the moderate forms, not the
extreme or radical forms. "Moderate, though it may be incon-
sistent, individualism" and "moderate, though it may be inconsist-
ent, socialism"^ alone coimt. In passing he remarks that this
» Ibid., p. 16.
' Cf. ibid., p. 35: "The conduct of a whole nation is governed by something
better than sordid views of self-interest;" also p. 493, where "public opinion" is
contrasted with "the selfishness or recklessness of politicians."
3 Ibid., p. 3. 4 Ibid., p. 10. s Ibid., p. 17. ^ Ibid., p. 18.
140 'II IK I'KOCESS OF GOVERNMENT
l.ul)lii opinion "is recorded titlur in the statute book or in the
volumes of the reiK)rts,"' a form of statement which will frequently
recur, and which puts the knife at the very roots of his whole
theory, because if it is ultimately to the statutes that one must turn
to prove the opinion, then the opinion is dangerously near to a
gratuitous element in the interpretation, which had better be
omitted altogether.
Dicey proceeds to ask several questions about this "body of
beliefs, convictions, sentiments, accepted principles, or firmly rooted
prejudices,'" which together make up pubhc opinion, about its
existence, origin, continuity, and checks. The whole body, he
tells us, may generally be traced to " certain fundamental assump-
tions."3 There are "tides of opinion" that swell till some other
tides cross them and check them. Their origin is most often
" with some single thinker or school of thinkers." In the ordinary
course of events a man of originality or genius has a great idea.*
He preaches it to his friends and disciples. These soon form a
school. The school propagates the creed till it is generally accepted
or till some person of eminence, such as a powerful statesman,
takes it up — and there you are. The laws result.
Dicey does not, however, maintain that mere argument will
bring this about nor will intuitive good sense. There must, he
says, be "favorable conditions. "^ But notice how he speaks of
these conditions, looking out upon them from the standpoint of
the dominating ideas. He calls them "external circumstances,
one might almost say accidental conditions." He is talking here
of the repeal of the com laws. The "opinion" was Adam Smith's
to start NN-ith. These mere incidental circumstances gave it a
chance to make itself effective, but all the time " harmony with the
disbelief in the benefits of state intervention weighed above every
other consideration." And a moment later we have him, in talking
of slavery, say that the slave-owners' "honest beUef" w^as "the
' Dicey, op. cit., p. 17. 3 Ibid., p. 20.
• Ibid., p. 19. * Ibid., pp. 21, 22.
5 Ibid., pp. 23-27; cf. also p. in: "Men's beliefs are in the main the restilt
of circumstances, rather than of arguments."
IDEAS AND roEALS AS CAUSES 141
result, not of argument, not even of direct self-interest, but of
circumstances."
Already, therefore, we have inextricable confusion : first thought
harmonies are in the saddle; next external circumstances: there
is no peace for the theory.
This pubhc opinion undergoes a slow development, and often
it is a generation ahead of legislation. The young theorists of one
generation become the elderly law-makers of the next. There
may rarely be a sudden alteration in the laws, never in pubUc
opinion.^
Cross-currents and counter-currents of opinion must be reck-
oned with, the latter, when surviving ideas of the last generation
or coming ideas of the next, have some fighting power ; the former,
when currents of thought," in a measure independent," fight against
the prevaiHng ideas. The cross-currents " arise often, if not always,
from the pecuhar position or prepossessions of particular classes,"
such as the clergy, the army, or the artisans.^ He would not Hsten
for an instant to a suggestion that these classes might have had
similar "opinion" to other members of the society of their time,
but were urging different laws because of their class interests.
All must be transferred into "opinion."
We must also take account of his admission that while laws are
made by opinion, they in turn help to create opinion, and the
following quotation is good for both phases: "Every law or rule
of conduct must, whether its author perceives the fact or not, lay
down, or rest upon, some general principle, and must, therefore, if
it succeeds in attaining its end, commend this principle to public
attention or imitation, and thus affect legislative opinion. "^ Also,
the influence of law on opinion "is merely one example of the way
in which the development of pohtical ideas is influenced by their
connection with pohtical facts. Of such facts laws are among the
most important; they are therefore the cause, at least, as much
as the effect, of legislative opinion."'* One might turn this last
sentence back on him as indicating that he gave up 50 per cent.
I Ibid., pp. 27-31. 3 Ibid., p. 41.
» Ibid.^ pp. 36-40. 4 Ibid., p. 46.
142 TIFi: PF^OCESS OF GOVERNMENT
ill li-ast of his theory wlicti he wrote it, but no matter. We can
take it for what he means it, as placing laws themselves as merely
one more of the external circumstances which influence opinion,
the all |K)werful.
With so mu( h of j»reliminary explanation Dicey enters upon his
interi)retali()n of the century's law-making. He distinguishes the
following periods:
1. The Piriod of Old Toryism, or Quiescence (1800-30).
2. The Period of lienthamism, or Individuahsm (1825-70).
3. The Period of Collectivism (1865-1900).
During each of these periods, he says, "a different current or
stream of opinion was predominant and in the main governed the
development of the law of England."'
In the first period pride in the constitution manifested itself,
and a reaction against Jacobinism: inertia ruled Parliament, and
there was "no theory of legislation."
The second period, that of utilitarian reform, reveals "a definite
body of doctrine," directly appHed to the reform of the law.
With the third period Dicey has more difficulty, even while
trying to outline it roughly. The school of opinion predominant
is called socialism, and it "favors intervention of the state even at
some sacrifice of individual freedom, for the purpose of conferring
benefit upon the mass of the people."^ Now despite his previous
explanation of the manner in which ideas arise and spread, he is
forced to admit that he carmot coimect this sociaHsm with any one
man, nor " even with the name of any definite school." In England
indeed, it " has never been formulated by any thinker endow'ed w^th
anything like the commanding abihty or authority of Bentham."
It has been " rather a sentiment than a doctrine," and "rather an
economic and a social than a legal creed." "Even now," he
repeats, "it is rather a sentiment than a doctrine."^
From this follows what Dicey calls a "curious fact," and what
is indeed most curious if there is any truth at all in his theory, the
fact, namely, that although the inquirer "can explain changes in
English law by referring them to the definite and known tenets and
« Dicey, op. cit., p. 62. ' Ibid., p. 64. 3 Ibid., p. 66.
IDEAS A\T) IDEALS AS CAUSES 143
ideas of Benthamite liberalism, he can on the other hand prove
the existence of collectivist ideas in the main only by showing the
socialistic character or tendencies of certain parhamentar)' enact-
ments."'
Think of it. Dicey is going to explain to us the course of legis-
lation by the legislative pubHc opinion behind it, and here the
minute he tries to apply his theory he is forced to confess that for
one of three periods the only way you can make sure of the opinion
is by inferring it from the laws, while for another of the three
periods (the first), not "a, theory of legislation," but "no theory"
has been the prevaiUng factor.
To my mind this is so significant that it overturns Dicey's
whole theory without more ado. Inasmuch as I want to be per-
fectly fair to Dicey and make the case against him from the whole
of his book, not from single passages, I shall carry the analysis
through to the end. But first there is one more unhappy admis-
sion on the same page with the one I have just criticized, the
admission, namely, that in the transition period between individual-
ism and collectivism he finds hnes of Benthamite acts "under an
almost unconscious [sic] change in legislative opinion," taking
"a turn in the direction of sociaHsm." Here he strikes a blow
not merely at his three types of opinion, but at his three types of
laws themselves.
Now if we examine his separate discussion of the period of
quiescence, or period of "no theory of legislation" — which accord-
ing to his principles should be stated rather as a period of a " theory
of no legislation" — we find him giving illustrations of certain
kinds of changes the laws underwent in that period, which he
attributes in part (i) to reactionism, and in part (2) to "the irresist-
ible requirements of the day," or to the " humanitarianism which
from 1800 onward exerted an ever- increasing inllucnce."^ One
would think that "irresistible requirements" made a pretty sound
explanation all by themselves if properly analyzed and studied,
but Dicey still regards them as incidental and external, operating
only in the absence of a "theory of legislation."
» Ibid., p. 68. 3 Ibid., p. p4.
144 THK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
The factory legislation of the times, he tells us, "was suggested
not l)y any general jmnciple but by the needs of the moment."'
That this same factory legislation holds its place as a forerunner
of other laws through the two later periods does not suggest to
Dicey either that he should bring the "theory" back to it, or carry
its "needs of the moment" forward to later times.
The comliination acts were due to (i) a dread of combinations
and (2) a tradition of paternal government, which had two sides,
the first setting up the duty of the laborer to work for customary
wages, and the second demanding a provision by the state of sub-
sistence for those out of work.* These factors he calls "elements
of the public opinion in 1800," but they are not public opinion in
that broader sense he uses to explain his great periods. They are
much too specific in their nature for that, and the use of the word
"paternalism" does not help out. Certain "selfish" group
demands of the people are all too clearly apparent in these "ele-
ments."
Humanitarianism, as preached at the time, is used to explain
the abohtion of the whipping-post for women, of the pillory, of
spring guns, of state lotteries, and of the slave trade.^ Humani-
tarianism is defined as "that hatred of pain, either physical or
moral, which inspires the desire to aboHsh all patent forms of
suffering and oppression." This comes nearer to an "opinion"
cause than the other illustrations, but Dicey, except for mentioning
the names of some of the preachers of this humanitarianism, does
not attempt to show how the preaching actually did the work; he
offers nothing to meet the objection that the preaching may have
been merely the verbal embodiment of the movement that was
doing the work, and he does not consider in the shghtest degree
the question as to why only a few selected "forms of suffering or
oppression" were eliminated and not a lot of others, riotously
"patent" then, and just as "patent" still.
Reaching the end of this period. Dicey thinks that "the EngHsh
people had at last come to perceive the incongruity between rapidly
changing social conditions and the practical unchangeableness of
' Dicey, op. cit., p. 108. » Ibid., p. 100. 3 Ibid., p. 106.
IDEAS AND IDEALS AS CAUSES 145
the law."' The implications of this sentence are hard for his
system of interpretation, and still more so is his list of transitional
factors : (i) the rapid change in social conditions; (2) the increasing
unsuitability of unchanging institutions; (3) the fact that lapse of
time had obliterated the memories of the French Revolution,^ and,
finally, (4) the existence of the Benthamite school. Here the
"legislative public opinion " makes a poor fourth in a list of causes.
While touching on such "external" causes it is worth noting
that he in fact explains the reform bill as due to the shifting of the
"population, wealth, power, and trade, "^ toward the north of
England. That leaves Benthamism high and dry, but Dicey,
addicted to his opiate, the ideas, does not recognize it. He, of
course, is compelled directly or indirectly to bring in just such
factors for every concrete piece of interpretation he offers that is
definite enough to have value or even meaning.
Now we come to the second period, the period of individualism,
where Dicey has the easiest ground for the apphcation of his
method. We may accept his assertion that "from 1832 onward
the supremacy of individualism among the classes then capable of
influencing legislation was for many years incontestable and
patent."'* We may accept also his description of the legislation
of the time as in fact individualistic. Does he show a causal
connection ?
The Benthamism that is in question is "the Benthamism of
1 Ibid., p. III.
2 Dicey tells us (p. 123) that in the ordinary course of things the law of Eng-
land would have been amended before the end of the eighteenth century. Appa-
rently, then, the process of amendment would not have had to wait for Benthamism
which is offered to us as the cause of the change. It may perhaps be that the long
damming up of law amendment by the indirect influence of the Revolution was the
cause of the ultimate violent cflJorescence of Benthamist individuahsm with all its
specious claim to wield the thunderbolt and guide the chariot. If so — I make the
suggestion without emphasis — many of the idealistic interpretations of society in
the middle of last century are due to that ultimate cause, and the very fallacies and
superficialities of Dicey 's own method of interpretation must be traced back to it.
Needless to say, none of these theories, nor Dicey's own, can have any measurable
influence as such on the actual course of legislation. They show their detached
extravagance all too plainly.
3 Ibid., p. 116. 4 Ibid., p. 176.
i.}6 rilK I'ROCESS OK OOVKRNMENT
common-sense." "This liberalism was the utilitarianism, not of
the study, l>ut of the House of Commons or of the stock exchange."'
It "was not in reality the monojioly of Liberals. "=■ The men who
guided legislation "were all at bottom individualists,"^ even when
some of them were not avowed Benthamists, or would even have
re|)udiated the individualist fellowship. "Utilitarian individual-
ism .... was nothing but Benthamism modified by the expe-
rience, the jjrudence, or the timidity of practical politicians."'*
On the theoretical side, to which Dicey gives a long discussion,
he admits that there are a number of problems which could not
be answered by the theory so that all its adherents would agree.
For instance, there is the problem of contractual freedom, to which
they have " never ^ given a perfectly consistent or satisfactory
answer.""' It is a little rough to make an unsolved theoretical
problem ])lay the part of effective public opinion in law-making,
but let us not laugh at the theory in its worst entanglements. Let
us pass this tenderly by.
The reason that Benthamism swept the nation, according to
Dicey, was that it pro\aded the reformers with an acceptable
programme and with an ideal. ^ Also it "exactly answered to the
immediate wants of the day."' Yet "the essential strength of
utilitarianism lay far less in the transitory circumstances of a
particular time than in its correspondence with tendencies of English
thought and feeling, which have exhibited a character of perma-
nence."^ Also, " Benthamism fell in with the habitual conservatism
of Englishmen,"' and "its strength lay in its being the response
to the needs of a particular era and in its harmony with the general
tendencies of English thought." '° One can take his choice. Also,
one can allow for a factor which Dicey emphasizes in another
place, namely Bcntham's long life and influence, which gave his
theory authority, on the principle that "iteration and reiteration
arc a great force.""
' Dicey, op. cit., p. 169. s Ibid., p. 155. 9 Ibid., p. 173.
' Ibid., p. 170. 6 Ibid., pp. 124, 167. '° Ibid., p. 175.
3 Ibid., p. i68. 7 Ibid., p. 170. II Ibid., pp. 127, 128.
* Ibid., p. 124. 8 Ibid., p. 173.
IDEAS AND IDEALS AS CAUSES 147
Now for an illustration or two of the way the individualistic
public opinion is actually used by Dicey. The four kinds of laws
which he thinks Benthamism aimed at were the transference of
poUtical power into the hands of a class large and inteUigent
enough to identify its own interest with the interest of the greatest
number, the promotion of humanitarianism, the extension of
individual liberty, and the creation of adequate legal machinery
for the protection of the equal rights of all the citizens.' He tells
us that Benthamism saw "that the unreformed Parliament, just
because it mainly represented the interests and feelings of land-
owners and merchants, would not sanction fundamental improve-
ments in the law of England,"^ which is all well enough, but then
he asks us to believe that this Benthamism, which could not get
results directly, was able to get them indirectly, by demanding that
this same selfish Parliament first reform itself in order that after-
ward it could Benthamize everything else against its own wishes.
That is hard to swallow, especially when we recall his statement
that the reform of Parliament was really due to the shifting of
industrial power to the north of England.
Discussing factory legislation, Dicey quotes from Shaftesbury
a list of men who opposed it — Peel, Graham, O'Connell, Glad-
stone, Brougham, Bright, and Cobden^ — and says that while
Shaftesbury was puzzled at their opposition and inclined to call
them wicked and selfish, the truth of the matter was that they were
all "individualists," and the genuine explanation of their anti-
factory-legislation attitude lies in that point alone. One laughs.
We know enough of the industrial interests and affiliations of most
of the men on this list to feel certain that theory was a minor con-
sideration for them, however much it was in theory's name that
they urged and argued. Shaftesbury himself speaks of "mill-
owners, capitalists, and doctrinaires," as opposing him, with the
doctrinaires in third place, and also says that "in very few instances
did any mill-owner appear on the ])latform with me; in still fewer
the ministers of any religious denomination." One can fairly
I Ibid., pp. 183, 184. 3 Ibid., pp. 233-36.
» Ibid., p. 166.
148 11 IK I'KOCESS OF GOVERNMENT
will drop llir individualistic cxpianalicm of the opposition to such
legislation. It weakens Dicey's own work.
We may end this analysis of his interpretation of the period of
individualism with two (|Uotations which may be placed side by
side :
The more closely the renovation of English institutions under the influence
of Mi-nth;im is studied, the more remarkably does it illustrate the influence of
jHiblir opinion uiK)n law.'
This continuance, indeed, of Benthamite legislation is the main proof, as
well as from one iK)int of view a chief cause, of the dominance of individualism
throughout pretty nearly the whole existence of the reformed Parliament.'
The last quotation is a wonder. It bobs up with a malevolent
grin to give the lie to Dicey's whole system of interpreting the law.
So vague does Dicey's public opinion become when he brings it
to close quarters with the work he assumes it to do, that he really
docs not know what a stab he has here given himself.
And now for the period of collectivism which we can handle
much more expeditiously because we have already quoted Dicey's
preliminary admission that he could find the "pubHc opinion"
only through study of the laws. He proposes to give us, ''an attempt
at analvsis of the conditions or causes which have favored the
growth of collectivism or, if the matter be looked at from the other
side, have undermined the authority of Benthamite liberalism."^
The conditions to which the change is due are: (i) the Tory phi-
lanthropy and the factory movement; (2) the changed attitude of
the working-classes; (3) the modification in economic and social
beliefs; (4) characteristics of modem commerce; (5) the intro-
duction of household sutTrage.-* Here we have a set of conditions,
without even the naming of a school of thought as one element in
the series, such as we found before in his conditions surrounding
the transition from the first to the second period. A typical scn-
• Dicey, op. cil., p. 20S. This sentence is from a two-page summan- of the
preceding chapter, entered in the table of contents as "Benthamite Reform an Illus-
tration of Influence of Opinion." In these pages I can find no hint of argument
and no summary of argument. They consist only of bald assertions, and of facts
that do not go to the point at all.
» Ibid., p. 183. 3 Ibid., p. 217. 4 Ibid., pp. 216 ff.
•1 IDEAS AND IDEALS AS CAUSES 149
tence in this part of the book is: "The mere decline of faith in
self-help — and that such a decline has taken place is certain — is
of itself sufficient to account for the growth of legislation tending
toward socialism."'
He attempts to set forth the principles of collectivism under
one heading and the general trend of such legislation under another.
As a matter of fact the distinction is merely formal, and all he
succeeds in doing is to divide his set of coUectivistic laws irregularly
into two groups, when he could better discuss them directly and
all together. Indeed it is the principles "as actually exhibited in
and illustrated by English legislation during the latter part of the
nineteenth century"^ that arc the only principles he presents. It
would be absurd for him to appeal to Marx at this point, and quite
as absurd for him to name the dreamy English socialists and
communists of the first half of the last century.
It is needless to take up any of his illustrations of coUectivistic
legislation. The sole point at issue is his method of abstracting
the essence of these laws in the form of a principle and making
the principle explain them. What he sets forth about the combi-
nation law may be taken as a ready test by anyone who looks
farther into his position.
We find him referring to " that latent socialism, not yet embodied
in any definite sociaHstic formulas, which has for the last thirty
years and more been telling with ever-increasing force on the
development of law in England. "^ We find him insisting that
the difference between the two types of legislation, individualistic
and coUectivistic, is "essential and fundamental," because "it
rests upon and gives expression to different, if not absolutely incon-
sistent, ways of regarding the relation between man and state. ""♦
We find him cheerfully adding that "modern individualists are
themselves generally on some points socialists," and a paragraph
later telling us that " the inner logic of events leads to the extension
and development of legislation which bears the impress of collec-
tivism."^ And finally we find him conjecturing in a footnote that
' Ibid., p. 257. 3 Ibid., p. 299. s Ibid., p. 301.
' Ibid., p. 258. 4 Ibid., p. 299.
I50 TIIK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
if tlu' prof^rt'ss toward coUcclivism is ever checked il will not be
"by the inllucncc of some thinkers," but by "some patent fact,"
such as ovcrhcavy taxation.'
Here aj^ain, one can take one's choice. The sentences arc
absolutely inconsistent. And the reason lies in a theory that will
not stand the simplest test, in a vagueness that will permit any
inconsistency without crying for mercy.
In his chapter on the cross-currents of opinion. Dicey gives
oi)cning for easy criticism. His main illustration is ecclesiastical,
and what it all comes to is that the corporate interests of the English
church, garbing themselves in argument and theory, have suc-
ceeded in checking a good deal of proposed legislation and muti-
lating a good deal more. The chapter does not bear on speculative
thought or any other kind of "public opinion" after the style of
Dicey at all.
Then comes the chapter on judge-made law. And here we
have "fiction" treated as the development of judicial opinion,
when really what the facts Dicey brings forward mean is that
through the courts, "fiction" and all, the interests of the nation
have been solving their conflicts.
Another chapter brings law-making opinion into relation with
other public opinion — with "the whole body of ideas and beliefs
which prevail at a given time." So theology, politics, jurispru-
dence, and political economy are examined with relation to legis-
lative opinion, and the lives of thinkers in their evolution are
brought into touch. It is pleasant to read Dicey 's comments on
the way in which freedom of discussion and the disintegration of
belief, the apotheosis of instinct and the historical method have
caused the authority of Benthamism to grow weak; but what it
all has to do with English law, after the mass of contradictions
and confusions that our analysis has revealed, it is hard indeed
to imagine.
And now at the end, Dicey concludes by saying that
the relation between law and opinion has been in England, as elsewhere,
extremely complex, that legislative opinion is more often the result of facts
' Dicey, op. cit., p. 301, footnote.
IDEAS AND IDEALS AS CAUSES 151
than of philosophical speculations; and that no facts play a more important
part in the creation of opinion than laws themselves; .... that each kind of
opinion entertained by men at a given era is governed by that whole body of
beliefs, convictions, sentiments, or assiimptions, which, for want of a better
name, we call the spirit of the age."^
So we come out with the "spirit of the age," as pale a spook as
ever walked a lawbook's page.
Dicey's fundamental purpose has been to show that a syste-
matic legislative public opinion can be located in society — that is,
in the English society of last century — which is the source of its
tendencies in law-making. He does not claim that this public
opinion makes itself; he admits many factors, incidental and other,
that combine to build it up. But once built up, he treats it as a
solid substantial existence, which can be used for itself as a cause
or interpretative factor. In other words, he does not make the
ideas that form his public opinion absolute in the old metaphysical
sense, but he makes them a good phenomenal imitation of that
old tnetaphysical absolute.
In applying this theory to his three periods of law-making, he
uses "no ideas" instead of "ideas" as the principle of the first
period; he finds a systematic theory of legislation (Benthamism)
which answers his purpose in the second period ; and in the third
he frankly admits that the only way he can get his hands on any
such theory is by inferring its presence bodily from the facts of
legislation he calls upon it to explain.
In short, his own theory fails him in two of his three periods,
and if there is any value in it that value must be shown solely in
the Benthamist period. But even here we have found him, toward
the close of his study, admitting that the legislation itself is the
"main proof" of the existence of the public opinion. We have
found him utterly at sea as to whether to place the main weight
on thought harmonies, or on accidental circumstances in explain-
ing the rise of the opinion. We have found him admitting that
the Benthamist opinion itself had never reached a clear logical
formulation in some of its most important central points, and we
^ Ibid., p. 463.
152 riii; I'KOCESS of government
Ikivc failed lo find in liim a scintilla of proof that it really is opinion
whidi (loiniiialcs tlu' legislation. A few sequences, such as show-
ing' that Adam Smith antedates the reform bill, can hardly be
rej^'arded seriously as proof of a causal connection.
Which all comes to this, that Dicey has begun with a naive
belief in the validity of opinion, that he has never seriously thought
through the dilTiculties, and that he has been content to allow
vagueness and haj)hazard concessions to creep in to such an extent
that they undermine his whole theory without his seeming to
know it. Great as is the value of his book as a study of English
legal history, as a causal explanation of the process by which the
laws have been created it has just no value at all.
This is not to say that there is not much revelation of causes in
the book. It has been impossible for Dicey to discuss laws merely
as i)roducts of opinion. He has brought in the important factors,
but not deliberately, with balanced recognition of their true worth,
and not with adequate statement. All such things lie outside in
the "external" and the "accidental," and there they miss being
properly balanced, weighed, and stated. That is the penalty a
man must pay for devotion to the "ideas."
Another comment that follows naturally from the above con-
siderations is that the "ideas " as Dicey uses them are really nothing
more than a form of sensationalism — we may call it "yellow"
science. They are the spectacular feature. Everybody howls
individualism and liberalism; everybody swears to live and die
by the creed of Bentham; everybody uses all the brains he has to
defend the actions he is going to take, or to confute his opponents'
actions, in terms of that theory. And then, just because the theory
evokes interest and discussion, the pseudo-scientist thinks it has
all the magic power it claims to have. He exalts it, instead of
l)utting it under his microscope and testing it for what it is.
When "ideas" in full cry drive past, the thing to do with them
is to accept them as an indication that something is happening;
and then search carefully to find out what it really is they stand
for, what the factors of the social Hfe are that are expressing them-
selves through the ideas. The thing to do is to try to become more
IDEAS AND IDEALS AS CAUSES 153
and more exact, not to outdo the vagueness of popular speech.
What Dicey owed us in this book was a quantitative analysis of
public opinion in terms of the different elements of the population
which expressed themselves through it. He owed us an investi-
gation of the exact things really wanted under the cover of the
"opinion" by each group of the people, with time and place and
circumstance all taken up into the center of the statement. In
other words, he owed us a social dissection, which he was eminently
prepared to offer, and not a rhapsody. Not accepting that task,
he has succeeded in reducing his system of interpretation to an
absurdity; but if his book leads other students to a recognition of
the pitfalls of the "ideas," to avoidance of the evils, and to a search
for real factors of explanation, it may, perhaps, in this way offer
compensation for what it itself failed to accomplish.
CHAPTER III
SOCIAL WILL
ThiTf is a form of naive social interpretation which is not nearly
so troublesome as the interpretation through individual feelings
or ideas, which has indeed for the most part signified a distinct
progress toward a coherent interpretation among those who use
it, but which nevertheless must be arrayed along with the others
as amounting at bottom to nothing more than a poor make-
shift or stop-gap. 1 refer to the appeal to the social will, the social
mind, the social consciousness, and the other social psychic enti-
ties, unities, or personified processes of that type — it matters not
at all just what one calls them, since the very best and most careful
distinctions that have ever been made between the various terms
amount to nothing more than word-splitting.
The good point about the "social -will" in social interpretation
is that it signifies a breaking loose from the hard and fixed individ-
ual, as the unit of explanation, and that it points toward a recog-
nition that a real social material is before us for investigation, and
not merely a fictitious, external, now-you-have-it-and-now-you-
don't set of institutions wliich can only become real when given a
sharp reference to individuals who bear or create them.
The bad point is that in putting the emphasis on the personified
society itself, it makes all Social interpretation an equation of
identical terms. When we talk about social choices, we may
distinguish between content and process, and we are interested in
understanding both, or, better said, we are interested in under-
stantHng the given phenomena from both points of view. But
beyond content and process there is nothing at all. So that when
we iKTsonify the choosing capacity of society, we are putting a
spook behind the scenes, or, what is the same thing, in other words,
we are emphasizing a tautology as a cause. To say that "the
social will does" something or other is at bottom merely to restate
154
SOCIAL WILL 155
the problem. To talk of the will of the state is nothing more than
to talk abstractly of the state itself. We can learn just as much
about "social choices" without using the phrase as with using it.
The word "will" and similar words have had a certain meaning
in individual psychology, legitimate enough so long as the indi-
vidual was studied with his social setting unknown or ignored.
But to transfer them from the individual to society is not to help
matters, but merely to transfer a faulty point of view from an
application in which it had some value, to an application in which
it has no value. The use of the phrase "social will" gives us, in
exchange for all the httle tautologies which we found in the feehngs
and ideas, one huge tautology. But if we beheve that it carries
us to the explanation of social happenings, we are simply lulling
ourselves to sleep with a huge draught of the "psychic" opiate.
Now this social will appears in many forms. We find it varying
all the way from the schematic mysticism of Mackenzie to the
more practical, but also more self-contradictory, assertions of
Ross. As a curious development of it we have a No\icow, who,
needing an "organ" to carry the will — for how absurd to have a
fimction without an organ — places it in the ehte, in other words,
in "our best citizens," where it finds a happy home.
By Ward the social will is described as the form or process
through which the feehng forces work in certain high stages of
social organization. But his tendency is to make it very concrete,
and to rely upon its aid as a cause in his interpretations, instead of
holding fast to it as process and studying directly what is passing
through it. He states it frequently as a sort of welfare-seeking
institution; thus he makes the modern democratic state embody
the social will, and says it "has but one purpose, function, or
mission, that of securing the welfare of society."' By making the
social welfare concrete and the social will which is seeking it also
concrete, he of necessity abandons the useful statement of will as
a form of social process. Moreover to agree with Ward one
would have not only to accept the feelings for the work he puts
on their unhappy heads, with all the infinite loopholes to error
' Pure Sociology, p. 555.
X
156 Tin: I'KOCESS OF GOVERNMENT
thfv l)rin^ with tlum, Inil in addition one would have to admit
the greater prevalence of this social willing process in modem
over earlier societies; one would have to be ready to arimit that
there was quantitative increase in it, and that more things were
accomjilished i)y and for society through it now than formerly.
To all of which there is most grave objection.
An ela!)orate attempt to utilize the social will in interpreting
society is made by Professor C. A. Ellwood in a series of articles
in \'()ls. I\' and V of the American Journal oj Sociology. His
IH)siti()n is frankly based on Professor Dewey's psychology, which he
lifts up bodily in its main categories and applies thus straightway
to social facts. I can use his articles to show briefly the fundamental
weakness of the social will for practical use in interpretation.
Professor Ellwood holds, to start with, that the real proof of
the existence of "socio-psychical processes" is that social groups
"act."' But he makes no attempt to absorb the idea process in
the action so as to use it to give the action meaning at every point.
Instead he holds the action sharply distinct over against the social
mind. The social action seems to be for him a part of the physical
world, the so-called objective world. The social mind is subjec-
tive, and directs the performance. It does not direct the whole
jx>rformance, or rather he does not pretend that he can explain
the whole performance in terms of the social mind. He puts the
social mind's subjective interpretation alongside of an objective
interpretation which shows what part rivers, and mountains, and
ore deposits, and microbes, and so forth, play in society.
.\n objective interpretation is necessary beside a subjective
interpretation, he tells us, because
there arc many physical phenomena of land and climate and many physiological
phenomena of race and population, which are not less than psychical facts
to Ix? taken into account in a complete interpretation of society, but which
social psychology as such cannot consider.^
He calls his study "functional psychology,"^ yet he makes the
subjective and the objective interpretations "supplementary"*
» American Journal 0} Sociology, Vol. V, p. 104.
» Ibid., Vol. IV, p. 658. 3 Ibid., p. 808. 4 Ibid., p. 658.
SOCIAL WELL 157
to each other. For instance, he thinks he can give us a subjective
interpretation of revolutions, and then supplement this by an
objective interpretation, and so put all our curiosity to rest.
He transfers Dewey's categories of co-ordination, adaptation,
and habit to the social whole, and tops off a definition of law as
follows: "Laws are formal expressions of social habits which have
come into consciousness.'" I will not criticize that here except to
say that the laws we get into contact with are anything but "for-
mal ;" they are the social habits themselves, as mediated by govern-
ment; and if those laws only are law which have got into "con-
sciousness," whatever that may really mean, it will be hard for
anyone who has ever gathered enUghtenment from the school of
Sir Henry Maine to accept the social will for practical use in his
studies.
" Society," ihe writer tells us, "selects ideas and individuals upon
the basis of their utiUty in building up or maintaining its co-ordina-
tions."^ There we have that generalized social welfare which takes
the murderer up with the avenging pubHc into one social whole;
which is a unity in expressing itself. So long as murderers exist
to give meaning to laws against murder, the social welfare as a
whole expressing itself in laws against murder will be a fiction, not
a fact. The theory of the social will does not allow for this — in
actual interpretation — whatever its advocates may say about it
when the ink and paper are handy and the writing co-ordination
is well set.
In this way Professor Ell wood wants to found a social psychol-
ogy "upon the fundamental principles and categories of a func-
tional psychology of the individual. "•* It is significant that he
finds it easy to discriminate between individual and social psychol-
ogy, but he has some trouble in showing how the social psychology
is different from sociology.'' No wonder. Nor is it any wonder
that some years later, with his theory no doubt well sunk into his
habits of thought he can still find time and interest to discuss
with some of his colleagues such questions as the nature of
1 Ibid., p. 816. 3 Ibid., p. 822.
2 Ibid., p. 821. *Ibid., Vol. V, p. loi.
158 I UK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
"jwychical unity," "intcr-individual psychic processes," "object-
ively organic unities," and other angels-on-the-point-of-a-needle
f|uesti()ns.'
Leaving tin- delmitions, the hair-sijlitting, and the fine-drawn
logic out )f account as insignificant, there are certain things we
need to know alx)ut a social mind, if we are to use it concretely in
social interpretation; if, for example, we are going to try to make
it help us in understanding why some particular law or type of
legislation is adopted.
( )nc' is as to its substantiality. Can we get hold of it anywhere ?
Can wc handle it by itself before trying to put it to work ? Have
we any tests of it ?
Another is as to the amount of the social-mind process. Is
there more of it in one society, or at one stage of a society, than at
another? Can we estimate societies in terms of this so-called
consciousness or conscious process, and depend on them to mani-
fest it in a way that helps us to understand things ?
As far as the first question is concerned, the second part of this
lx)ok will show how in the processes of government where it is
su])jx)sed to be most characteristically manifested the only thing
to do with the social will is to ignore it, as a separately existing
"tiling," and analyze to the best of our abiUty what is actually
happening. Except by way of challenging anybody who believes
in its substantial participation in social life to locate it somewhere
— not humorously as in the elite, but seriously — I will drop that
question here, with only a reiterated general denial that any such
factor can be put to work concretely in our interpretations.
As for the other question, a few illustrations and comparisons
will be useful. We are told that society is becoming conscious of
itself, that it is progressing in ability to construct itself, that it is
gaining in freedom to make itself what it ^\^ll, and so on. We are
otTcrcd a picture of the benighted horde or tribe or barbarous
nation, bound in custom, helpless, driven hither and thither, and
told to contrast it with our modern nations boldly initiating wonder-
ful things and manipulating their own destinies, conscious to great
• American Journal oj Sociology, Vol. X, pp. 666 5..
SOCIAL WILL 159
extent of what they are about. It is an arbitrary, artificial con-
trast, that falls before the first touch of fact.
In what sense can we Americans say that we created our own
government ? Certainly we did not create ourselves as a nation.
It was the nation, the people with common interests, however far
they recognized the full truth, that made the Revolutionary War
possible, that expressed itself in the war. There was no separately
existing self-consciousness in that. We certainly did not set out
to gain independence; it is well enough known that we were driven
into independence against what we call our expressed desires and
our better judgment. Did we even make our own form of govern-
ment ? One cannot say yes while the beginning of our federal
institutions can be traced back in the long history of the British
monarchy, while some of the most important characteristics of
the relation of the governmental powers came from the forms of
the olonial governments as matured in the thirteen states. Were
we more self-conscious than, say, the Phoenicians were when they
built up the institutions of Carthage, or the Peruvians when they
established their "paternal" government?
The most striking feature of our government is generally set
down as our Supreme Court with its unique control over the laws
through its tests of their constitutionality. Can anybody point
to any self-consciousness, any deliberate creative act in that fea-
ture of our Constitution ?
Is there more originality in our president than there was in
Rome's transition from king to consuls ? in Sparta's elevation of
its ephors ?
When one of our states holds a constitutional convention is it
taking more intelhgent heed to its ways than Rome did when it
appointed its decemvirs ?
When the old tribal system broke down in Greece and in Rome
a territorial basis of government was estabhshed. Do not the
demes which were then established in Athens and the wards in
Rome show as much of deliberate planning as anything we can offer ?
And before that time, when we consider the tribal structure
at Athens, with its four tribes, each with three phratrics, each with
i6o i'HK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
thirty Rentes; or at Rome, with its three tribes, each with ten curiae,
each with tin f^entcs, do we not see society's formulation of its
own institutions — to use that ])hrasing — as plainly as we could
wish ? And this whether the established numbers of gentes and
phratries were full all (he time, or ever? Somebody or other,
somehow or other, had been hammering things into shape with
as much deliberate plan as even our most pigeonhole-headed
moderns can lx)ast of.
Or let us go still farther back. It is unquestioned that there
have been many transitions from maternal to paternal descent
and clan organization. When the time of change came, individ-
uals, for reasons, we may say, of many kinds, began to break away
from the old system and take to the new. But that is not the full
statement. At some time the group ceased to punish the innova-
tors. That is one of the essential things. There must have been
many a ])alavcr of the ancient worthies. The change shook the
old social organization, we can say without exaggeration, to its
very foundations. Do we talk of our own greater social will and
self- consciousness in contrast to such a change, when we want to
introduce a trifling institution Hke the referendum or direct pri-
mary and have to spend decades making a beginning ?
Or let us take specific acts. The Spartans used to select their
boldest helots for assassination to insure the preservation of order.
Were they less deliberate and self-conscious than we are when w^e
adopt — or fail to adopt — some new method for suppressing anar-
chists ?
The names we still use for the days of the w^eek were allotted
perhaps four thousand years b. c. in Egj^pt by a most compUcated
process of astronomical reckoning, designed to show planetary
influence. Is it probable that we today can show any institution
or custom more consciously created ?
Pharaoh filled his granaries for seven years' famine ? Are we
often as full of foresight ?
Rome under Augustus adopted the Lex Juha et Papia Poppaea.
Are we passing from our excitement over divorce and race suicide
to more calculated action ?
Read of an Indian tribe's council of the chief and sachems, and
SOCIAL WILL i6i
question whether, up to the full measure of the situations they
had to face and of the problems that they had to decide, they did
not act with a consciousness which[equals^anything our parliaments
can show. . ■■• ■ i
In our recent American rate legislation, how many of our
people today honestly think they know what the results will be ?
Is not the great proportion of blind striking at a head that needs
a blow easy to see ? t'J^
When we base our laws on moral principles, do we not cut the
ground out from under the modern social mind, quantitatively
lauded, as much as we think we cut it out from under some old
society when we speak of its unconscious custom ?
We have a reign of graft, and some graft-cure operations.
Will the factors of social will and consciousness appear prominently
on either side, however we may twist the facts to find them ?
I do not pretend that such haphazard illustrations as I have
just given prove anything positively. But they certainly ' do
challenge the upholder of self-consciousness as a growing quahty
or force or power, to show with exactness what he means. I do
not want to be understood as denying point-blank that the processes
of modern society are not possibly more complex along those lines
that are meant when the word consciousness is used than were the
processes of earUer stages of society. That is an open question
which anyone may prove who can. I do deny that that proof can
be drawn from any manner of comparison between so-called indi-
vidual and so-caUed social psychic process, or from any admiration
of the marvels of present-day intellect, or from any study that
has yet been made of such social achievements or such social
organization as modern science and modern representative govern-
ment. It is a greater complexity of psychic process, remember,
that has to be proved, and there is simply no proof at all in the
fact that it is easy to assume complexity of process to explain com-
plexity of results. Within the shght range of difference between
our highest and our lowest societies, the whole of organic evolution
being taken into account as background, the conclusion simply
does not follow from present evidence, and it will take exceedingly
delicate tests in the end if it is estabUshed.
CHAPTER IV
POLITICAL SCIENCE
Set opposite to all these various forms of so-called psychical
interpretation, we have a dead political science. It is a formal
study of the most external characteristics of governing institutions.
It loves to classify governments by incidental attributes, and when
all is said and done it cannot classify them much better now than
by lifting up lx)dily Aristotle's monarchies, aristocracies, and
democracies which he found significant for Greek institutions, and
using them for measurements of all sorts and conditions of modern
government. And since nobody can be very sure but that the
United States is really a monarchy under the classification or Eng-
land really a democracy, the classification is not entitled to great
respect. Nor do the classifications that make the fundamental
distinction that between despotism and repubhcs fare much better.
They lose all sight of the content of the process in some trick
point about the form.
WTien it is necessary to touch up this barren formahsm with a
glow of humanity, an injection of metaphysics is used. There
will be a good deal to say about civic virtue or ideals or ci\dhzation.
It makes a very pleasing addition to the work, but the two parts
have no organic unity, not even in the hands of a Bluntschli.
After compounding the formahsm and the'metaphysics, political
science adds works on practical problems of the day or on the
higher pohtics to suit the taste. These works are sufficiently
detached to be capable of preparation in almost any form, and
they can be manufactured as well by rank outsiders as by the
experts of the science to which they are supposed to belong.
Your political scientist thinks he is going a long way afield and
that he is meritoriously portraying "actual" government when he
inserts in his work some remarks on the machine, the boss, and
the practical virtues and vices of men practicing politics. He is
162
POLITICAL SCIENCE 163
quite right in this but only by contrast with the writers — I do not
say on constitutional law, for these are doing their proper work
in their proper way— but those who take the fictions of constitu-
tional law and pretend thereby to give a real picture of society in
the process of governing itself.
But the boss himself is almost as formal an element in a pohtical
science as is the president or governor. When you state him you
have not stated the Hving society. You must still go behind to
find what are the real interests that are playing on each other
through his agency. A discussion of the work and defects of a
state legislature carries one nowhere as long as the legislature is
taken for what it purports to be— a body of men who dehberate
upon and adopt laws. Not until the actual law-making is traced
through from its efficient demand to its actual appHcation, can one
tell just where the real law-creating w^ork is done, and whether
the legislature was Moses the law-giver or merely Moses the regis-
tration clerk. ^
There is hardly anywhere a work on pohtical science that does
not, when it examines the phenomena of pubhc opinion, either
indulge in some wise and vague observations, or else make a frank
admission of ignorance. =* And yet what can there possibly be to
a pohtical science with the very breath of its hfe left out ? He who
writes of the state, of law, or of pohtics without first coming to close
quarters with public opinion is simply evading the very central
structure of his study. -i^
1 Professor Giddings has made some observations on private associations as
the real law-formulating bodies in America, but so far as I know has not attempted
to get the full meaning out of what he has observed, nor have the facts been utilized
elsewhere. See Democracy and Empire, chap. xv.
2 Jellinek, Das Recht des moderiien Skiates, Vol. I, "AUgemeine Staatslehre,"
p. 93, gives part of a page to describing pubUc opinion and concludes: "Die Bil-
dung, Feststellung, Bedeutung der offentlichen Meinung im Detail zu untersuchen
gehort zu den interessantesten Problemen der SociaUvissenschaft, zugleich aber
auch zu den schwierigsten, da es sich hier um massenpsychologische Vorgiinge
handelt, deren Objekt mit Hijlfe unserer wissenschaftlichen Mcthoden schwer zu
beobachten ist." Cf. Preuss, Schmoller's Jahrbiich jiir G.V. und V., Vol. XXVI,
P- 579: "Jenes undefinierbare, jedcr rcchtlichen Erfassung spottende, und doch
in lebendigster Realitat existierende Etwas das man offentliche Meinung nennt."
1 64 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
We liiivi- in this world many lawyers who know nothing of law-
making. They play their part, and their learning is justified by
their work. We have many law-makers who know nothing of
law. They too play their part and their wisdom — though they
may not \x: able to give it verbal expression — is none the less real.
Hul the practical lore of neither of these types of men is a scientific
knowledge of society. Nor by putting their two lores together do
we make an advance. It is they themselves we must study and
know, for what they are, for what they represent.
CHAPTER V
SUMMARY
I have written the preceding chapters to prepare the way for
the chapters that are to follow. I have wished to make it clear
why the method of interpreting society which I am about to set
forth is justified, and why the irruption into it of any unassimilated
factors of the kind I have been criticizing would only serve to
distort it.
What I have thus far said amounts to about this: that the
"feelings," "faculties," "ideas," and "ideals" are not definite
"things" in or behind society, working upon it as causes, but that
they are — or rather, that what is meant by them is — society itself,
stated in a very clumsy and inadequate way.
I am aware that many refined theories exist which state these
psychic elements not as "things" but as process. I am not con-
cerned with such theories, but with the practical use made of the
elements themselves in interpretations of society; and in that use
they always present themselves as "things," however much that
fact may appear to be veiled. Their very statement as phases of
individual hfe throws them concretely into opposition to the
society which they are used to explain, and makes concrete causes
out of them in the bad sense.
To avoid misconception let me emphasize afresh some of the
things I have not said.
I have not denied the existence of a real, living, intelligent hu-
man social material which is indicated when feelings and ideals
are mentioned.
I have not denied that this feeling, thinking, ideal-following
material is the stuff we have before us in interpreting society.
I have not denied that the ordinary statement of this material
from the individual view-point, in terms of our current vocabulary,
is fairly adequate for the purposes of everyday life. I have no
165
i66 IIII'; I'ROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
more (k-sirc to interfere in that region than I have, for instance, to
deprive some unhappy being of the anthropomorphism that suits
his needs.
I have not denied that this same orcHnary statement has an
aesthetic value, any more than the physicist would deny color
when he studied wave-lengths. That form of statement has a
clear value for fiction and poetry— and for painting and music
too— which for all I know, or care, it will retain forever.
What I have denied is that the separation of feelings and
ideas, looked on as indiv-idual psychic content, from society or
from social institutions or from social activity, is a legitimate pro-
cedure in the scientific investigation of society. I have insisted
that such a separation, when built up into a system of interpreta-
tion, collapses of its own defects, and brings do^^^l the whole system
in a crash. I have insisted that such a separation in fact exists
wherever feelings or ideas are given independent value as factors
in interpretation, even though the interpreters themselves enter a
most vehement formal denial. I do not for an instant claim that
the point of view I am taking is novel, except perhaps so far as
the manner of its presentment and emphasis is concerned. On
the contrary — I shall return to this in my final chapter — I conceive
that every advance step that is taken in the analysis or understand-
ing of society, whether in history, in ethnology, or in sociology,
involves, tacitly at least, this point of view.
' But, of course, even though the feeling and idea system breaks
down, the feelings and ideas still have a meaning in the social
interpretations in which they are used, and fill there a function.
' They are used because they bring a certain amount of order into
what would otherwise be a chaos.' In casting them out we must
be very careful not to cast out that meaning, that order, with them.
It is with them much as it was with Zeus in early Greek thought.
He answered a real purpose. He held together the various per-
sonified powers of nature and of social life in a system. When
' Professor Small points out that Adam Smith used the "sympathies of the
impartial spectator" in just this way, and indicates what those sympathies are
equivalent to in modern sociology. See Small, Adam Smith and Modern Sociol-
ogy, p- 39; cf- also, pp. 50, 92.
SUMMARY 167
we cast out Zeus we must be careful to retain the practical realities
of our lives which he has symbohzcd. We are justified in casting
out Zeus only when we have reached a better way of stating those
reahties. Indeed until then to cast him out would be impossible.
What are the practical realities for which these feeUng and
idea factors stand ?
If we take the feeling elements in everyday speech we readily
see that they stand for certain regularities or tendencies in activity
stated as individual conduct. For instance, if a child is kind to
its cat it is apt to be kind to its dog. We indicate the tendency by
calling the child kind hearted. A man's habit with regard to
truth-telHng, or with regard to steahng, is similarly made his
quaHty. Among boys who pass examinations with honors in one
set of subjects we believe we find some tendency to stand high in
other subjects, and we say they are smart. A man outraged at
the fate of the Boers is apt to be outraged at the fate of the Fili-
pinos. Here we are getting over into the regularities denoted by
the ideas. We find part of the people getting the suffrage and
the rest probably tencHng toward it: the men have it, and the
women follow after — perhaps. We observe a government we
call a democracy in one land, and probably we see a tendency
toward a similar democracy in a sister land : we talk of the domina-
tion of ideas. We find legislation regulating the meat industry
following swiftly on railroad and insurance legislation, and we
attribute it to the development of something or other in human
nature. We get half a dozen liberties and we state a lot of other
things we want as liberties also ; and we say that it is the ideal of
liberty that is guiding us. We appeal to a difference in feelings
and ideas to explain habits and customs different from our own;
for why should not other individuals and nations act just as we
do, if they are not fundamentally different in some way? The
very complexity of social fact drives us to the individual feelings
as interpreters; and the appearance of "chance" in history, the
prominence of conspicuous persons at critical moments, seems
to give the explanation in terms of individual character added force.
In this way individual men are not only distinguished from one
i68 '11 IK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
another, as I have pointtd out before, but, what is the reverse
side of the same process, regularities of character are made intel-
ligil)le. And Inyond this the re^njlarities in the institutional side
of life are also brought under the same system of explanation.
Their unity and coherency arc emphasized; the adaptations of
men to each other in society are given a passable statement; each
man is brought into relations to the mass of men.
'^'c. However, while these feehngs and ideas put themselves forth
to be definite dependable things, experience proves that they only
conform roughly to the actual activity that can be observed. We
may put tliis dilTerently by saying that from the standpoint of the
feelings we can observe nothing more than unreliable, poorly
defined tendencies of activity to correspond to them. Kindness to
cat or dog is not accompanied by kindness to snake or mosquito.
Truth-telling has many dififerent standards, according as friend or
foe is addressed, according as "business" or pleasure is in view.
The "smart-boy" tests prove their narrow limitations when the
tests of the practical world are superimposed on them. We see
on further inspection that it is the exception rather than the rule for
men to be enraged similarly over the fates of the Boers and
Filipinos. And so with all the others.
When we get to the application of these feeling and idea
elements to social interpretation, our difficulties become greatly
increased. The whole working process, regularities and tenden-
cies and all, is what we must study. But we find the feelings we
are using breaking down under our hands. We find it necessary
to make them ever more and more specific, or else ever more and
more generalized, if they are not to become admittedly inadequate
for the work we put upon them. And similarly with the ideas.
We must make them so exact and definite that they fit the facts
of the case like shadows, or we must make them so highly general-
ized that there is no more substance to them than shadow^s. And
in either case, at either extreme, we thus bring them to vanishing
points. When a feeling is so definite as, say, the love of theater-
going, or when an idea is so definite as, say, some detail of ballot-
law reform which we are on the point of adopting, it becomes the
SUMMARY 169
same thing as our activity itself, for all the good it does us as an
aid in interpretation. And when a feeling becomes so general as,
say, virtue or vice, or an idea so general as, say, democracy or
liberty, it is necessary to fill it full of social content in order to give /
it any meaning at all. _^d that content is the social ^cti\ity itself. /
In^eitherj:ase the feelings and^M^^sv^-msh into di^ They •
stand naked before us as impotent inferences from activity.
This is equivalent to the point I have repeatedly made in the
preceding criticisms that nowhere could the feeling and idea
factors be located for themselves as apart from the activities they
were appealed to to explain — nowhere, that is, except in the speech-
activities of society. There they must be studied, of course, with
great care and their meaning and value allowed for on Hnes which
will occupy us for a considerable time in the chapters which are
to follow.
Parenthetically I may admit that feehngs and ideas as tags,
or labels have a certain practical utility for scientific investigation
which may continue even after a more satisfactory system of inter-
pretation is in use. We may name particular feelings and ideas'^
in order to mark out tentatively fields of phenomena for investiga-''
tion. Here they serve as symbols of the unknown quantities of ^
our reckoning. Probably also they can be used conveniently to "^
this extent in the prehminary descriptive work which prepares the
way for the more careful description which is interpretation.
And possibly, though at much risk, they may be employed as a sort
of shorthand expression in indicating briefly causal connections
we have already worked out, which would take many words to
state otherwise. But the minute we go beyond these uses, the
minute we plant ourselves on feehngs and ideas as soHd facts, that
minute we open the way to all confusions.
Let me next give a more theoretical statement to the position I
have taken. No matter how highly generalized or how specific ,
the ideas and feeUngs are which we are considering, they never ' ){
lose their reference to a "social something." The angry man is
never angry save in certain situations; the highest ideal of Hberty
has to do with man among men. The words anger and hberty
I70
TIIK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
can easily be scl over as subjects against groups of words in ^he
predicate which define them. But neither anger, nor liberty,
nor any feeling or idea in between can be got hold of anywhere
except as phases of social situations. They stand out as phases,
moreover, only with reference to certain positions in the social
situation or complex of situations in the widest sense, within which
they themselves exist.
It has long enough been established that there is_j]La-"auter
world" except in idea. This is not deep philosophy, but plain
common-sense; for it amounts merely to saying that we do not
know any outer world except the world that is known to us, or,
what is the same thing, as it is known to us. But it is equally
well established that we ourselves, ideas and all, are a functioning
part of that very outer world.
Now, when we attempt to separate an idea or a feeling as such
from that outer world, do the best we can, we cannot help taking
up a large part of that outer world into it, for that outer world is
felt idea. To succeed in this attempt at separation is just as
impossible as to find an outer world that is not "known" to us.
And when we strive to interpret any phase of that outer world —
say, some phase of society — by the aid of feeling or idea, we inevi-
tably have society itself contained in our alleged "cause;" and this
in the double sense — or, better, from the twofold point of view —
that the idea or the feeUng is social, and that the society is reflected
in the feeling or the idea. This admitted, it follows at once that
the individual as the definite, firm, positive, foundation for indi-
vidualized feelings and ideas, is a highly abstract social idea
himself, and in the way in which he is put to use, fictitious. All
depends then for the success of our interpretation in terms of such
feelings and ideas as built up in speech for practical uses and
carried over into science, on how well our interpretation actually
works — on its practical scientific efficiency.
But we may well expect difficulty with interpretations based
on a fundamental spHt between the idea and the outer world. If
we throw emphasis on either one of the two to the exclusion of the
other, and deny the complement, we are constructing a world out
SUMMARY 171
of stuff that has definition only in terms of the very opposition we
attempt to deny. If we take both concretely — the subjective and
the objective — and attempt to function them together in a causal
system, we are putting two halves together which never possibly
on causal lines can make one whole ; for the excellent reason that
the original analysis which produced the two parts was not made
on adequate causal Unes.
I do not want to be understood as placing any special reliance
on reasoning of the kind I have just been using. It has a certain
incidental use in helping to define the position I am taking, but it
lacks the direct control of facts, and anyone who lets himself be
hypnotized by it is lost. With that warning, I think, the little of it
I have indulged in here can do no especial harm.
To get back to our immediate subject, which is the meanings
and values in associated human life which are represented by
feelings and ideas, and the possibility of preser\ing them after the
feehngs and ideas in their concrete statements are cast out, we can
get a little more light on it through the distinction between process , ■^■■
and content, which is, of course, merely a distinction of point of
view. The meat of this book has to do with the process of govern-
ment, but that process itself would appear as social content, if the
point of view chosen were that of individual psychic process.
I have at no time any quarrel with the point of view of functional
psychology, but I want it scrupulously adhered to for its own pur-
poses, so that whenever psychic "states" are taken full of social
content, the point of view in interpretation wiU change to corre-
spond. The psychic process may correspond admirably to brain
physiology, but concreted " chunks " of brain will not serve on crude
causal Hues to explain "society," since society is itself — to adopt
that phrasing — just brain "chunks" and nothing more. One
does not hft himself by his own boot-straps anywhere else, and
there is no evident reason why he should attempt it here.
With this imderstood, I think it will be apparent that in casting
out the concrete feehngs and ideas we are not necessarily casting
out the values and meanings they represent. These meanings and
values long ago read themselves into the feelings and ideas for
; ^
172
TIIE TROCESS OF G0VP:RNMENT
certain practical purposes. If wc can rearl the values and mean-
ing's into another manner of statement which will aid us to inter-
pretation where the concrete feelings and ideas prove themselves
incoherent, then we suffer no loss while making a very great gain.
Instead of values taken from very limited view-points — as
with the feelings— or of values taken from slightly wider, but still,
in comparison with the whole social range, very narrow view-
points— as with the ideas — we must seek for values and meanings
which will work coherently throughout all society; so that, instead
of making society a patchwork of fecHng and idea view-points, a
mosaic with lines of unreality all through it^ we can grasp it more
as nature presents it to us in its mass effects, with its lines of dif-
ferentiation and opposition, such as we must insert in it to hold
it under comprehension, better corresponding to the reality.
We must deal with felt things, not with feelings, with intelligent
life, not with idea ghosts. We must deal with felt facts and with
thought facts, but not with feeling as reality or with thought as
truth. We must find the only reality and the only truth in the
proper functioning of the felt facts and the thought facts in the
system to which they belong.
PART II
ANALYSIS OF GOVERNMENTAL PRESSURES
CHAPTER VI
THE RAW MATERIALS
The student of government, like the student of any other
subject, must make his investigations upon a mass of raw materials.
What are the raw materials of government ?
The morning paper tells me that the Standard Oil Company
has been indicted on some thousands of counts for violating the
federal laws. A few months ago it told me that many employees
of one of the executive departments of the government were
scurrying over the country gathering facts about the way in which
that company had conducted its business with the railroad com-
panies. Before that it told me of a resolution put through Con-
gress ordering such an investigation. Still farther back I could
have read of the excited activities of many men which came to a
climax in the passage of the law under which these indictments
have been found. If I wait a few months more I shall read of
the trial in the court, of the punishment which will perhaps be
imposed, and in part of the effect which the punishment has, or,
alternatively, which the indictments even without punishment
have, on the company's business methods. I have reason to
think also that I shall soon hear a certain leader of a great portion
of the people announce fresh steps to be taken toward the intro-
duction of improved methods of controlhng such corporations
as the Standard Oil Company; and that this will sooner or later
be followed by a renewed assertion by another popular leader
that the present methods of control will be applied so vigorously
as to secure the desired change in conditions without further
legislation. If I care to I may read many criticisms of everybody
and everything concerned, both in current periodicals and in books
of all degrees of remoteness from the hottest spots in the conflict.
Here is some of the raw material for the study of government.
There is no other kind.
175
1 -jb THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
It is first, last, and always activity, action, "something doing,"
f the shunting hy some men of other men's conduct along changed
lines, the gathering of forces to overcome resistance to such altera-
tions, or the dispersal of one grouping of forces by another grouping.
The writing and talking and speech-making are activity just as
much as any of the other facts I have mentioned.
Always there are many men involved, a few directly and very
many more indirectly. But the distinction between direct and
indirect is not fundamental. It is a practical distinction made
for convenience in describing currently to one another what is
happening; made so that it will not be necessary to tell the whole
story over again with each new incident. For our purposes, as
we shall see in due time, it is an arbitrary, and not an edaquate,
distinction.
i The raw material we study is never found in one man by
himself, it cannot even be stated by adding man to man. It must
be taken as it comes in many men together. It is a "relation"
between men, but not in the sense that the individual men are
given to us first, and the relation erected between them. The
"relation," i, e., the action, is the given phenomenon, the raw
material; the action of men with or upon each other. We know
men only as participants in such activity. These joint activities,
of which governmental activities are one form, are the cloth, so
to speak, out of which men in individual patterns are cut. The
"President Roosevelt" of history, for example, is a very large
amount of official activity, involving very many people. Any
other " President Roosevelt " of pubhc life, physical, temperamental,
moral, is but a limited characterization of certain phases of that
activity.
These collections, or groups, of men are composed of thinking
and feeling actors. They act through a thought-and-feeHng
process. "Ideas" and "feelings" are words we use to emphasize
certain phases of men's participation in the actions. Ordinarily
we regard these "ideas" and "feehngs" as concretely existing
individual possessions. Of late years they have frequently been
spoken of as socially existing. From either point of view it
THE RAW MATERIALS 177
remains true that we know nothing of ''ideas" and **feeUngs"
except through the medium of actions.
This last sentence will be misunderstood if it is taken to mean
that the ideas and feehngs are "there," and that the action is
"merely a medium." We must be on guard against such false
interpretations of current language. It is akin to the lowering
of activity to a mere abstract relation between given men. In
fact, the action is what we have given us. It is our raw material.
The ideas and feehngs, as such, are not given facts ; they are not
fixed points from which we can start to argue. They are ways of
talking about the facts; they are hypotheses, very useful in their
way for the practical purposes of everyday hfe ; but by us always
to be employed only with the interrogation mark after them;
always to be abandoned whenever and wherever they are not
useful. The talk itself — comprising all the speaking and writing
activities — is, of course, never to be abandoned. It is to be reck-
oned with in interpretation for just what it is, Uke any other form
of activity.
The "ideas" and "feehngs" serve to give the individual man
his orientation in the social activity in which he is involved; they
serve, so to speak, to define him as an individual. There is no
idea which is not a reflection^ of social activity. There is no
feeHng which the individual can fix upon except in a social form.
He can define it only in terms of language which myriads of men
have built up. He knows what he feels, and indeed even that
he feels, only in terms of other men's hves.
The "ideas" and "feehngs," as set apart concretely, serve tol
indicate the values of the activities which are our raw materials.
We are not able to take up for consideration any activity as com-V
I I see no reason for offering definitions of the terms, reflect, represent,
mediate, which I shall use freely all through this work. They indicate certain
facts that appear directly in the analysis of social activity; the very facts indeed
that I am especially studying. My epistemological point of view is admittedly
naive, as naive, I hope, as the point of view of the physical sciences; I nowhere
lay any stress on the difference between the conscious and the unconscious, save
as a minor variation of technique in the group process; and even that variation
can much better be brought out without the use of the two terms than with it.
178 -mK PROCESS OF GOVKRNMENT
plrtc in itself. If wf altc-mjjl it we have a corpse, or rather a
fraKnirnt of a corpse, in our hands, ami that is poor material for
study. The activities are interlaced. That, however, is a bad
mannir of*\ocpFcslioH. ^OT the interlacing itself is the activity.
We have one great moving process to study, and of this great
moving process it is impossible to state any part except as valued
in tirms of the other parts. This is as true of the talk activities
as of any other activities. Take the indictments against the
Standard Oil Company. The only way we can state them ade-
quately is in terms of eighty million people, more or less; and
indeed that even may not be a sufficiently comprehensive state-
ment for purposes of study. The meaning of the indictments,
their values, extend to the activities of people who live far beyond
the confmes of one country; extend, indeed, very nearly to all
parts of the world. But where the values become too trifling we
can profitably ignore them; rather, we must ignore them if we
are to make any progress in scientific study.
It is of crucial importance in handling our raw materials to
give them a statement which will yield the best range of values for
our purposes. And, it is almost needless to say, our purposes, when
we aim at scientific study, will vary materially from the purposes
of everyday Ufe with reference to which these phenomena are
ordinarily stated and defined. We must attain a statement, a
valuation, which will neglect none of the important phases. When
the best available statement has been made, the scientific study
will have been carried to the farthest pDssible point.
Now the trouble with "ideas" and "feelings" when they are
taken up just as we find them floating around is that they give
values to our activities which may be, and which indeed usually
are, very different from those we must reach even at the very
starting-point of our investigation. Here is a city with a bad
street-car service and two million dissatisfied citizens. The
situation breaks into pohtical life in the form of a municipal-
ownership movement. The "ideas" and the "feehngs" flash
over the lield of action at white heat. Municipal ownership, in
and for itself, takes the pulpit and yearns to burn at the stake all
THE RAW MATERIALS 179
objectors. In its vocabulary one set of citizens become boodlers,
and another set the purest patriots. Altruism, as a matter of
rhetoric, damns selfishness. Selfishness, almost convinced that
it is selfish, sneers at altruism. If one can pass through the fiery
furnace without being consumed, one can get many hints as to the
values of the activity before him. But if one attempts to reach
an understanding of what is happening by adding brand to brand,
"idea" to "idea," and "feeling" to "feeling," one can never
reach the goal. The confusion grows worse, the more faithful
the arithmetic.
And yet there is not a shred of all the activity which does not
present itself as an affair of feeling and intelligence. It cannot be
stated with these phases left out. It cannot be stated with these
phases erected into other "things," and set over against it. It can
only be stated as purposive activity (in a very broad sense of the
word purposive), as the doings of wanting- knowing men in masses.
It can only be analyzed and its parts can only be valued in
terms of all the rest of it. It cannot be analyzed in a structure
of "feelings" or in a structure of "ideas" taken apart from it.
We must get our raw material before us in the form of purposive
action, valued in terms of other purposive action.
Let me restate all this in a different way, with special reference
to government. The raw material of government cannot be
found in the lawbooks. These merely state the method by which
certain participants in government proceed, or claim they proceed,
in their part of the work.
It cannot be found in the "law" behind the lawbooks, except
as this is taken to mean the actual functioning of the people — in
which case law is an important aspect of the raw material, but by
no means a complete statement of it.
It cannot be found in the proceedings of constitutional con-
ventions, nor in the arguments and discussions surrounding them.
Hints and helps are there, but only minute fragments of the raw
material.
It cannot be found in essays, addresses, appeals, and diatribes
on tyranny and democracy. All that the world has ever produced
i8o riir. TKOCESS of government
in this way cannot do m(jrc- than point out to us where the raw
material may \k' found.
It cannot be found in the "character of the people," in their
specific "feeling's" or "thoughts," in their "hearts" or "minds."
All these are iiyjxjtheses or dreams. Whatever truth or other
import an(c ihey may i)ossess, they certainly are not "raw material,"
but instead highly theoretical.
The raw material can be found only in the actually performed
legislating administering-adjudicating activities of the nation and
in the streams and currents of activity that gather among the
people and rush into these spheres.
p The people striking at somebody or something along lines
that tend to produce purer food, safer insurance, better transporta-
tion facilities, or whatever else — that is the raw material of our
study. That is the "simple fact" given us to examine, nDt the
" complex fact " for us to build up in interpretation out of " simple "
facts which we hold behind in our hands. Motives? They
may be as complex as you will. And the more you deal with them
the more complex they become. And with them you go into the
labyrinth, not into the light.
The "ideas" and "feelings" appear on the scene, I have said,
not for themselves, but in the form of words. Spoken and written
language (signs and expressions included) is supposed to convey
them from one person to another. This language is one form of
activity. It is prominent in government and pohtics. We all
know the sea of words in w^hich political movements swim. We
must not neglect it. On the other hand we must not overvalue it.
When we follow everyday theories and set the "feehngs" and
"ideas" off by themselves as the "causes" of the activities, we
arrive at once at an enormous overvaluation of the forms of
activity which appear in words. To the words are attributed
a sort of monopoly of intcUigence. Ideas, creeds, theories, and
other such abstractions, all of them appearing actively as words,
arc supposed to rule the world, other things being merely ruled.
One can get anywhere from primitive magic to "laissez faire"
or a theocracy by this sj'stem.
THE RAW MATERIALS i8i
It is no doubt because that particular form of activity which
consists in the moving of the larynx or the pushing of a pencil
has a direct value relation with such a ver}' large proportion of
all our activities that it has gained this extravagant attribution of
importance. And then, too, the pencil- pushers naturally value
their own activity most highly, and, as they have by far the best
opportunities to make their valuation known, they have set a
fashion of speech about it.
Language is surely a technique of fundamental importance.
But nevertheless it is what is reflected in language that demands
primary attention. Language must be regarded as a differentiated
form of activity, and the only way we can handle it with any
approach to scientific accuracy in studying social phenomena is
by valuing it, not with reference to some theoretical idea or feeling
content, but with reference to other acti\aties directly.
The language activity is simply one case of the organ-within-
an-organism problem. I consider it futile to discuss it in terms
of organ and organism, mainly because when we use those terms
we are desperately endeavoring to explain the better known by
the less well known. And that is never profitable. But if there
is any difference in principle between the language activity as
differentiated from other activity, and any other form of the
differentiation of social structure, I have failed to appreciate it.
Observe, I am not here discussing quantities or relative importance,
but simply the nature of this differentiation of acti\aty.
When our popular leader — to revert to the Standard Oil
illustration — gets upon the platform and tells us we must all
rally with him to exterminate the trusts, we have so much raw
material for investigation which we must take as so much activity
for just what it is. If we start out with a theory about ideas and
their place in politics, we are deserting our raw material even before
we take a good peep at it. We are substituting something else
which may or may not be useful, but which will certainly color
our entire further progress, if progress we can make at all on
scientific lines.
Now the speech, plus its thousands of printed reproductions.
i82 ini: PROCESS of government
backed up by llu- rxcili-d audicncx- that hcarrl it and by the large
part of the {K)pulation that reads and approves it, is certainly a
most significant factor in the political life of the country. But
just as the si)eech itself is a differentiated bit of activity — we have
it in no other form, remember, unless we consciolWp|||Luncon-
sciously bolster it up with a theory made in advance and dr3j^j|W
in by violence— so this whole set of speaking-writing-indorsing
people is a differentiated Ijil of activity. It is a group activity
that has taken on, temporarily or with some permanence, a fairly
defmite form — definite enough, at any rate, for us to handle,
descrilx', and value in terms of other activities. But if we are
going to handle, describe, and value it with the greatest measure
of success, we must be careful not to insert into it a theory of the
importance of ideas any earlier than we have to. We shall find
theoretical tangles set for our feet all too soon at the best, and we
must insist on getting first of all a view as objective as possible of
the talking-indorsing group of people to see how we can place it
with other groups or group activities, also observed by us in the
simplest, most direct manner we can bring ourselves to use.
If we label this group the "trust-busting group of August-
September, 1906; Bryan, leader," we have something definite
that we can take in hand and study. If we took merely the idea
it purports to follow as our material, we never could get beyond our
noses, without finding ourselves far out on the tangent that leads
to infinity. If we took instead the set of conditions, economic or
other, which we assume will decide the fate of this group, as our
material, we might or might not get to the goal, but we never
should follow the course. And the "course" in this case is just
what we have to explain. It itself is our raw material. We
must stick to it.
I vyant to make it clear that this "trust-busting group," "ideas"
and all — for without the idea phase we could not define it — is
much such a differentiation in social activity as any other group
or organ or structure, whatever term we may use in discussing these
tilings. Suppose we compare it with our federal Supreme Court,
meaning by that term the justices who sit together and react upon
4
V
THE RAW MATERIALS 183
certain people who come before them in certain ways. Now this
is an extreme case, by no means the easiest for purposes of com-
parison, since the Supreme Court is an estabHshecl body, presum-
ably having no demands of its own, while the "trust-busting"
group is^i|[Kli stent in its demands that demands seem to be
al^^M**'^^ that it consists of. The Supreme Court is a relatively
definite region in the configuration of social activity, itself brought
to its present condition as the result of the pressure upon each
other in the past of just such groups as the "trust-busters" repre-
sent today.
Both in the "trust-busting" group and in the Supreme Court
a speaking, thinking, feeling process is observable. In both ahke
there is reasoning: it is purely arbitrary for us to set one down
as reasoning and the other as vociferating merely on the|oasis
of our personal sympathies. Each has structure, that is, each
has a structural aspect, and it is only for Hmited temporary pur-
poses that we are justified in calling the court group organization,
and the other group public opinion or something similar with the
emphasis on the opinion. From the most rarified reasoning /
circles to the most definite organization circles we are dealing all
the time with a process identical in quahty at every stage, a pro-
cess of human activity.
"Trust-busters" and Supreme Court alike can be stated effec-
tively only as activity, only in terms of their values for other groups.
If " trust-busters," being by hypothesis in the minority among the
people, work up too much steam, so that they become a nuisance,
they will sooner or later perhaps conflict with the Supreme Court,
supported by the majority of the people (I simplify the illustration
to a mere counting of heads, leaving out other elements of strength),
and a change will thereby be brought about in their lines of activity.
Or, being in the majority, directly or indirectly, they will in time
be working their will through the agency of the Supreme Court.
The point I have been striving to make is that the talk activities,
the planning activities, as we actually find them among our raw
materials, are differentiated activities of groups of men in society,
with no more mystical, no more mysterious, no more fundamental.
i84 THK I'R0CP:SS OF GOVERNMENT
no mort- "causal" character to be assumed in them, than in an)
other groups or (lilTcrentiated sets of activities. Just what their
rehitions are with otiier activities, that is, just how the whoje
complex can best be stated to bring out the value of its parts,
is sf)methinR to be proved thrpugh investigation, not to be assumed
in advance on the basis of any psychology whatever.
These talking, planning activities will have to be examined
with great care as this work progresses. Any analysis of leader-
ship or of public opinion, fundamentally important phases of all
forms of government, must deal in great part with them. At
ever}' step wc must regard them as activities and as nothing else.
We must hold fast to what we can observe and examine and not
prop them up on hypotheses until we are sure the hypotheses are
of a kind that are useful to us. An inadequate vocabulary may
occasion now and then sentences which seem to desert this position.
In such cases leniency must be asked for the language and fair
judgment for the thought behind the language; this very sentence,
indeed, cries for mercy in just this respect.
It is now necessary to look a little closer at a specimen of this
activity with its thDught-feeling coloring; we must try to get a
cross-section of it under the microscope. We have no microscope
of glass and brass; we must make one by concentrating attention
at the right spots.
If we limit the term activity to the motions of the body — the
hands and feet and so forth — conceived of as more or less detached
from the "man himself," and extenial to him, we do not get good
material to study. Even such "external" activity as this cannot
be understood as merely external. It must be regarded as the
activity of the human being taken as a whole, as a person in society,
and even then it must be valued in terms of thousands, or rather
of millions, of individuals, if it is to have meaning as activity.
Suppose now I call such "external" activity manifest, or
evident, or palpable activity. To it then must be added under
the same term, activity, certain forms which are not palpable or
evident to the same extent at the stage of their progress in wliich
THE RAW MATERIALS 185
we have to search them out. They are activities which can perhaps
be pictured by the use of the word "potential." Or, again, we
may draw an analogy between them and molecular motion, in
which case the palpable or external activity corresponds with
molar motion. One way of stating them is to call them "tenden-
cies of activity." This contrasts them seemingly with the external
activity and is a half-compromise with everyday speech. It will
only be tolerable if we remember every time we use the words that
these "tendencies" are activities themselves; that they are stages
of activity just as much as any other activity.
Suppose we should try to state the activity merely as the bodily
motion, and then say that the tendency was the interior brain
motion. There would be a certain utility in the statement, but we
should probably find ourselves soon falling into the error of
the natural scientist who carries his points of view with all their
crudities into a field in which they will not apply at all adequately
till their crudities have been greatly diminished. Wc should
soon be following the error of everyday speech, which the natural
scientist inevitably follows, and treating these brain motions
concretely as feeUng things, making them crude causes of outside
happenings. This, however, would not do at all, both because
of the logical collapse of all such theories and because, as I have
previously shown, the whole structure of the outside world is
presented to us in this very feeling-idea content, which is in this
hypothetical way of speech supposed to be set over against it in
opposition. We are driven back to a statement in which we give
the brain motions value only in terms of bodily motions, which
they mediate, and which arc themselves (taken in the social mass)
the creative or constructive phase of the whole world, social and'
physical, as we know it. I hardly need to add that I am not making
this "activity" something different from or superior to any other
experience; I am treating it simply as the view- point from
which the unity of experience can best be appreciated, or, in
other words, as the view- point from which our interpretation
of society can best proceed and with which it can best make
progress.
1 86 I'lIK F'ROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
In ilic few jja^c's immediately following, which are devoted to
illustration of this use of the words, I cannot pretend adequately to
justify my jxjsition. For such justification the whole of this
book must be brought into reckoning, since this use of the
words itself rests upon and is the outgrowth of the studies which
fill up the rest of the lx)ok. I shall not later attempt to deduce
anything from what I am here saying. I am merely trying here
to indicate roughly how the great social processes work through
the individuals, not transforming themselves from objective to
subjective and back again to objective, but remaining always
coherent and consistent activity. I do not strive at an interpreta-
tion of society in terms of quahtatively uniform activity because
of what I am saying here, but I merely take the position I do take
here because I find it is possible to interpret society in that way.
If anyone deems it absurd to subsume these "tendencies" of which
I have spoken under activity, I may perhaps refer to Zeno and his
inclusion of rest under motion. Zeno is being rehabihtated in
the latest mathematical thought, and the need of getting a coherent
statement of rest and motion is no greater than the need of getting a
point of view with reference to society from which we can look
straight through the chains of activity without any breaking over
into other worlds on the way.
Tendencies that are suppressed, checked, inhibited, postponed,
are the most difficult to illustrate. If it is hard to see that there
is a stage of activity that is not " palpable," but that still is activity,
it is much harder to see that we have still to do with activity when
there is an inhibitory process which to all appearances cuts our
material off from any manifest bodily motions with which it can
be directly connected. I will move from the simpler to the more
difficult case in this exposition.
Now, of course, in everyday life the interpretation of the
phenomena to which I am directing attention is made by the aid
of the hypotheses of everyday psychology. A network of ideas,
fechngs, and motives is built up, set a-creaking, and made to
explain the results. That ordinary psychology comes itself
straight from observation of acti\ities through the use of language
THE RAW MATERIALS 187
for practical purposes. The word anger, for example, indicates
certain contortions of the face and violent motions of the hands,
with certain further tendencies of action. The ordinary psy-
chology (I mean that psychology which we ordinarily find used
in social interpretation) assumes an anger state or condition of
the soul which produces those contortions and violent motions;
and word and psychological hypothesis combined Hnk together
various varieties of anger activities for ease in description. But
neither word nor psychological hypothesis ever get beyond the
activity. They are hmited strictly to the bringing-out of its
meaning with reference to other activity. My own knowledge of
my own anger states has just that much validity and no more.
Certainly no man has any direct experience of the feeUngs or
other mental states of other men. He may make very useful, or
very shpshod, inferences in terms of those feelings, and so forth, of
other men; but the practical merit of his inferences, w^hether
good or bad, is not in question here. For myself, my observation
indicates that so far from having direct knowledge of the soul
states of other men, the truth is I have next to none of my own. I
know myself, so far as I have any knowledge that is worth while,
by observation of my actions, and indeed largely not by my own
observations, but by what other people observe and report to me
directly or indirectly about my actions. These observations about
myself are not different in character, so far as I am aware, from the
observations about other persons or things, which I use as material
of study or for practical guidance. There is no greater certainty
that they are correct by practical tests. So far as I have observed
other people they get their knowledge about themselves in much
the same way.
Whatever physical phase, therefore, there is to "anger," and
whatever shorthand paths of expression may be used about it,
it is, as it is concretely known to us, supported on a skeleton of
language deahng with observed varieties of action in ourselves
and in others.
If we should follow this anger acti\ity backward in time, we
should find it a complex of certain other activities, which, when
1 88 11 IK I'ROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
stated with sufTicicnt completeness, would state the anger activity
itself with no need of any soul-plus to add to it. But we do not
here want to follow it backward, but rather, taking it as an activity
roughly indicated by the word anger, to follow it forward. It is sure
to lx> found intertwining itself in other activities, with greater
or less neefl of new descriptive words to help us to place it. The
outcome will be noticeably different, for example, according as
my anger evolves around the olTice boy, around a drunken prize-
fighter, or around my own knotted shoelace. Wherever and how-
ever it works, we can state it fully in terms of various activities.
However addicted we may be to the use of psychological terms
in causal senses, we can still with a little practice succeed in stating
simple "soul states" in terms of activity.
Hut now we come to the suppressed, checked, blocked, post-
'poned, or inhibited activities which will probably seem not
"tendencies to action" but rather "tendencies" which have no
clearly evident action following after them. It is here much harder
to get the focus on the facts. Suppose our angry man " dissembles."
That also is a way of action. The anger activity which was
working toward a blow with the fist now stops part way, and
j)auses, perhaps waiting a more fitting time for the blow. The man
will tell his confidential friend about the situation, perhaps in
terms of anger, perhaps in terms of hate. We, however, unwilhng
to erect a word into a "soul state" and explain things by means
of it, must try what we can do by getting all the activities that are
involved stated as fully as possible. We find literally the man's
body, the whole man, not merely his abstract "soul," but all of
liim, poised as if to spring. He is directed toward some further
activity which will be more palpable, but no more truly activity.
As placed in his social world he will have many tendencies working
through him at the same time. There wll be not merely the
immediate irritation relation, whatever it was, but also various
other relations, such as those with the spectators, with broader
activities, or with the law, all these being commonly indicated
by the use of terms such as motives. These various phases of
activity, these relations, are working in a system of conflicts and
THE RAW MATERL\LS 189
adaptations (I will discuss the system phase in the next chapter),
and a palpable activity results which involves all of them, however
definitely for practical purposes in everyday speech we may
identify it with a single one.
If we state the full situation in terms of all the activities enter-
ing into it, we give values to the man's present attitude, and we
get the meaning out of it in a way in which we can handle it. Our
statement will be too compUcated and cumbrous to serve the turn
of the man and his friend in their talk about his fit of anger, but
it will be much more adequate for our purposes of further investiga-
tion. If we want to simpHfy the statement for any special need
of our own investigation, we shall then be free to choose such a
method of simpUfication as suits our ends. We shall not be tied
down to the current psychological simplification, which almost
inevitably would lead us into bogs and quicksands where we should
lose sight of our very task itself, even before we get well started
toward its achievement.
The cases I have been discussing are simpler to use in prelimi-
nary illustration than would be the kinds of social activity with
which we shall be most concerned in studying government. But
actually such cases as this are very much more compHcated when
we try to state them in terms of activity than are the ordinary social
facts with which we have to deal. There is too much which we
have no possible chance to observe, or even to learn of at second
hand, in the activities involved in an individual man's anger.
The biologist can tell us a great deal that is important about
earthworms, but if we demand of him an explanation as to just
what factors bring it about that two chance earthworms, as indi-
viduals, vary in this, that, and the other particular, we should be
asking something that he could not usually even attempt to answer.
He has nowhere to turn for the material for his answer.
Let us now transport ourselves into the directors' room of
an individual corporation, in order to see whether the procedure
that takes place there can be stated on a basis of activity or whether
we need the mechanism of concreted ideas, feelings, character,
knowledge, motives, and so on, to enable us to state the facts.
iQo Tin: PROCKSS of governmknt
If wc made use of such a mechanism we shoukl say that the direc-
tors had knowledge of the affairs of the corporation in varying
degrees; that they varied in character with respect to their honesty,
eagerness for large dividends, and scruples as to improper busi-
ness methods; that they represented varying interests outside
of the corporation's interest, which alone they are supposed to
represent, and that they varied in their degree of business acumen.
We should combine these factors and say that a proposed policy
for extending the corporation's sphere of operations was adpoted
or rejected as the result of all of them taken together, and we
should almost inevitably pass judgment upon the wisdom or unwis-
dom of the decision in accordance with our own view-points.
This way of stating the situation would be very useful if we
were attending a stockholder's meeting and preparing to cast our
votes on the election of new directors, or if we were passing judg-
ment on a question of pohcy, or if perhaps we were preparing to
preach a little public sermon on directors and their duties.
But suppose we wish to place that corporation in the industrial
life of the country. It will then be primarily the activities of the
corporation as they are reflected and guided through the directors'
meeting to which we shall give emphasis. There may be two
policies competing for adoption. We can state these in terms
of the corporation's contacts with the world around it, in terms,
that is, of its opportunities. The different directors will reflect
these opportunities in different ways. That sentence is misleading
but it cannot be helped. If the reader will take the emphasis off
the disreputable grammatical subject which makes all the trouble
by its pretense of independence, and try to see the corporation
acti\nty streaming right through the directors toward reaHzation
on one line or another, he will see the social facts, the given raw
material, without the misleading structure of hypothetical psychol-
ogy in which it is ordinarily stated. The corporation is nothing
but men. Its activities are nothing but the specialized acti\dties
of those men. Its factory wheels turn, its products stream out
under the hands of those men. It stretches its activities out in
this direction or that like the pseudo podia of an amoeba; there
THE RAW ]VIATERL\LS 1 91
may be a pulling or hauling, a strain between the activities; one
gives way, another prevails. And it is just the same when the
activities have not yet carried themselves through till they show
signs visible to the outer world; it is just the same while they are
still under debate in the directors' room. The two plans, the two
tendencies of the two factions of the directors, reflecting two
contacts with the surrounding world, two opportunities, fuse and
break away and fuse again till the corporation activities move
definitely forth on a positive, clear, visible Une. But_it2s_not^_the
plans as abstractly stated^ as idea^that thus conflict or coalesce.
It is the active groups of men^ for whom the plans are but symbols
or labels.
The whole situation can be stated in such terms. It can be
stated much more adequately than it can be stated by the psychol-
ogy of verbosity fresh drawn from practical hfe. It can be stated
in a way in which all the physical world — the environment — can
be taken up into the human activity, and in which all the trouble-
some human soul states can be reduced to terms of human activity.
It can be stated so that a fair chance will be given to explain the
whole complex of social activity with the corporation activity in
the midst of it, and thereby to get a fairer start toward the inter-
pretation of the structural lines of activity of the whole society.
For the present one other illustration must suffice. Suppose
we have a corrupt city government under consideration, and want
to reach a statement of the phenomena involving corruption which
will help us in analysis and in comparison with other similar phen-
omena. We can use the word "corruption," to begin with, as a
rough indication of the field of phenomena we are to explain,
without committing ourselves thereby to any special principle or
set of judgments, moral or other, about it. Now, the usual method
of statement used, for example, in the newspaper editorial, tells
us that certain corrupt acts have been committed because corrupt
men have been in office or have controlled officials or both. Put
in men who are not corrupt, the argument runs, and you will not
suffer from corrupt acts. There is, of course, a certain measure
of truth and a certain practical value in this form of statement;
192 iiii': i'KucKss or government
otherwise it would not be used. It is a very useful statement,
indeed, for campaign time. But it will not carry us very far for
our purjHises. There are too many questions about the special
forms which the corruption takes, about the extent to which it is
carried, and a\x)\ii its apj)earance at one spot and not at another,
which cannot be answered in such terms. If we explain the
facts in terms of "corrupt men," we find ourselves merely erecting
a set of prol^lems in the background corresponding identically
with the jjroblems in the foreground, but not throwing any hght
uiK)n the latter, when closely examined. Moreover we involve
ourselves in a mass of contradictions, and stimulate contradictory
forms of statement which still further heighten the confusion.
The statement in terms of "corrupt men" is, in short, much too
crude. It generalizes along limited lines and does not take nearly
enough of the factors described as "environment" into considera-
tion.
What is necessary for us to do in a case like this is to forget
the crude mental and moral qualities for a time, and stick close
to the acts that are actually performed. We must study these as
they come, in ias full detail as we have capacity to handle ; we must
bring them into relation with the acts of men in other phases of
the same city, and with similar acts in other cities. It is not moral
"qualities," remember, but actual activities, that we must compare.
To do this we must find out what circles of the population those
activities most directly represent in each case; we must get them
stated in terms of the opportunities for activity in the different
cases; we must work them out in terms of other circles of men
whom they affect, or injure, and we must get some measurement
of the extent of the injury. This cannot be done without includ-
ing a statement of the technique that exists for reaction against
injuries of these kinds. When aU this is done with sufficient
painstaking we shall find that we no longer need crudely to attri-
bute municipal corruption to "bad men," while on the other hand
we have not neglected any of the human-nature facts referred
to by the terms which describe "badness," but rather have com-
prehended much more of the mass of such facts. We shall have
THE RAW MATERIALS 193
the human nature and the environment comprised in our very
statement of the activities themselves — the actual happenings.
We shall not have "bare" activity, but very rich activity as mate-
rial for further theorizing.
As a matter of fact, just this sort of thing is actually done
both in popular agitation and in theoretical discussion as it now
exists. For instance, when municipal corruption and pubHc-
service corporations in private management are brought into
connection, the solid structure of the argument rests on a direct
correlation of activities as found by observation. And this remains
true, however vaguely the process is comprehended at the time,
however much it is overshot with statements in terms of mental
and moral qualities. The important thing is to make such state-
ments as these not accidentally, but deUbcrately, not partially,
but exhaustively, not in a medium of extraneous ideas and feelings,
but with the idea-feeling shadings thoroughly taken up into them
at their practical value.
I have said incidentally above that t^he environment itself
can be taken up into the statement in terms of activity. On this
point some further explanation is necessary. Ordinarily we treat
the environment as external and as sharply separated from the
men who by means of certain qualities that characterize them are
supposed to act upon it. That does very well for current con-
versation about our experiences. It also does very well for prelimi-
nary description of certain phases of our activities. No one wants
to eliminate geography from our scientific knowledge. Only,
even here, it is necessary to remember that for any studies of so-
ciety we may make this geography is a very far-away, very external,
description of certain phases of human activities. It is all right
by itself, but for a study of society it must not be so much used
by the latter as taken up into it.
Let us look at the physical environment, say, of the people of
the United States. There is not a factor of it that has any impor-
tance or any meaning whatsoever for a study of government, or
for that matter for any study of social activity, save as it is a part
,,,.j riiK I'kocKss or government
and pared of men's activities. In other words, it is not the environ-
ment we have to use, but certain special activities of men, v/hich
can only ix- stated, environment and all. That is our raw material.
Our national domain, the fertile land ready for immediate use,
which was available until recently for our expanding population,
is a Kood illustration, (iiven no increasing population, no improv-
ing transi)ortation, that land wouUl have had little meaning for
our country. Given a population of different activities, it would
have a dilTerent meaning. By taking the land plus the knowledge
of its use we can get a half-way statement good enough for some
purposes. But the knowledge factor is full of pitfalls as w^e have
to use it; and no combination of part statements gives us anything
more, or indeed nearly so much, as a definite statement of our
actual doings and tendencies of doing. Gold in the ground is
a cipher for a study of society so long as we are doing nothing and
not tending to do anything in connection with it. Gold that does
not exist is an important factor w'hen we are in a turmoil of chasing
for it. Mountains have various meanings, according as we are
fighting, railroad-building, food-hunting, cattle-raising, or health-
seeking. It is not the mountains at all, but the "meanings,"
the practical, actual, uses that form our material of social study.
The silver mines, as such, had nothing to do with the campaign of
1896, but certain silver-mining men did. Bad vi^eather for crops
abstractly stated is negligible, but men wdth changed acti\ities
according as granaries are full or empty are never negligible.
Mosquitoes twenty years ago and today are negligible, but men
angry at little pests twenty years ago, and men fighting yellow
fever and malaria today come upon our scene in different valua-
tions. This is so evident that it may possibly seem not worth
emphasizing. But it makes a great difference in many phases of
the study of government whether the environment, abstracted
from the human activities w^hich contain it as part of their struc-
ture, is dragged in for itself alone, or whether it is treated as the
raw material presents it to us — a phase of the actiWties, not as
something external " plus " the acting men.
Suppose we take such a social fact as the struggle of the coal
THE RAW MATERIALS 1 95
miners for a 5.5-per-cent. increase in pay, with many variations
in the terms of their demand in different mining districts where
different kinds of coal are produced and where different processes
are used. Tlie whole comes to an adjustment, and one can, of
course, indicate the Hncs of adjustment to some extent by describ-
ing the different mining fields as so much physical nature. But
at every stage of the process it will be not the mines objectively,
but the mines in terms of the men who arc working in them, who
own them, and who use the product, which must be taken into
account, and all the factors are reducible to terms of groups of
men, in which terms they get their best and richest statement,
with the fullest values, the most complete "relations," brought to
light.
We can get further light on this fact, even at this early stage
of our analysis, by aid of a reference to that absurdity which is
now and then seriously discussed — the "social environment."
This social environment must be by definition a something plus
the men who are members of the society; otherwise one cannot
get out of mysticism in talking about it. But the society is itself
composed of all of these same men. Hence it should be clear
that if one is really discussing the given social facts, the raw
material for our study, one cannot possibly deal with a social
environment. The social environment is merely one aspect of the
raw material, itself a social fact. It is only when one makes a 4^
fixed starting-point with the individual man. A, that one can put
meaning into the phrase, "social environment." But if one does
that one is not really studying social facts as he fmds them. He
is settling his whole study in advance by a whole mass of assump-
tions about the individuahly of the man. A, assumptions which
no doubt are all very well for their proper purposes, but which cut
the ground out from under our feet in this place. Such a study is
merely a systemization and dignifying of 4's little outlook on the
world. It has no value beyond the A variety of world -reflection,
from which it starts, and to which it is forever bound.
And along with "social environment," I may add, the "social
heredity" that is frequently heard of must also be driven out as an
196 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
imjwssibility. It also has meaning only in terms of the fixed
individual to which it is referred. If we get a truly social statement,
then the heredity phase disappears, because the whole material
is the social material just as it stands, and the addition of a heredity
idea is meaningless. In other words, while it is natural, from an
individual's standpoint, to talk of a "social heredity" of the customs
and habits and speech forms passed along from the individuals
of one generation to the individuals of the next, nevertheless if
we take a view- point that sweeps across individuals, that takes them
primarily in masses, we shall see the social facts, the raw material,
not merely spread out in space, but extended in time through the
ages; and the use of the word heredity in this connection will at
once show itself to be superfluous and, since superfluous, misleading
and harmful. What is true in this way of the past is equally true
of the future in social interpretation, from the same point of view.
It is not the individual's "future," but the social fact in time which
we have before us.
This consideration of environment brings us back to that dis-
tinction between subjective and objective which we have already
discarded so far els any value it has for social interpretation is
concerned; for the physical environment makes up a great part
of that objective over against which the subjective is placed.
Indeed, the old distinction and, for that matter, every distinction
between mind and matter, as obverse and reverse, or however put,
is a very crude metaphor; and, one may say, it is Httle compH-
mentary to human ingenuity that such a metaphor has been made
to do service so long. All distinctions between wants, and the
men who want, and the external acts of these men, and the in-
stitutions, or things done by them, and the external world in
which these things done are supposed to exist, when made con-
cretely and treated as different kinds of "things," are very crude.
We do not get in them different parts of a machine; but instead,
ditTerent phases of a process which, while serving certain practical
ends, will certainly not serve interpretative purposes. Likewise
any distinction between the conscious and the unconscious, made
concretely, Jind not merely as different shadings of the process
THE RAW MATERIALS 197
through which a common material passes, is equally crude.
Society rests on the whole nervous system, and indeed on the
whole physique, and not merely on certain crudely described
"states" in the higher brain centers.
We shall find as we go on that even in the most deliberative
acts of heads of governments, what is done can be fully stated
in terms of the social activity that passes through, or is reflected,
or represented, or mediated in those high officials, much more
fully than by their alleged mental states as such. Mark Twain
tells of a question he put to General Grant : " With whom originated
the idea of the march to the sea ? Was it Grant's or was it Sher-
man's idea?" and of Grant's reply: "Neither of us originated
the idea of Sherman's march to the sea. The enemy did it;" an
answer which points solidly to the social content, always in
individuals, but never to be stated adequately in terms of
individuals.
It is the same with all other forms of invention and discovery.
We shall find that the forces and pressures at work are great masses,
groups, of men. From this starting-point we shall come to the
same position that we reached when, starting from the environment
a moment ago, we found that it had to be stated in terms of masses ,
or groups, of men before it got any full meaning in social inter-
pretation. We shall find in the same way that that similarity
in the character of diflFerentiation which I tried to illustrate some
pages back as between talk groups and organization groups, holds
for all the so-called socially psychic features of society as well as
for all the institutional features ; and that from the point of view of
activity all these features can be valued in terms of one another,
the customs and social classes and subclasses and the knowledge
and religious factors and all that we come into contact with.
If any such view of the raw material of our study as I have
outlined sacrifices anything whatever of the mental and moral
qualities, of the feelings and ideas, of the motives and wisdom,
or rather of the real meaning of all these factors, which appear in
ordinary talk of social fife, then the view I have taken is a false
i(,8 rHK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
view, in Ihf st-nsc lliat ills inadequate. It is to be rejected, not
acccptcfl. My own attempts at the study of social facts have shown
mc no such sacrifice whatever, but rather, as I have insisted before,
a great increase in comi)leteness of statement.
I do not point to human mental and moral qualities in the
form of concrete feelings and ideas, definite, fixed causes which
produce results, effects at the same time of other causes, forming
links in a long scries of causes and effects of which society is made
up. But then who can point to such feehngs and ideas in the actual
material he uses, without regard to his initial theories about it ?
Each man is a feeling, thinking being. That much I can
admit without making any objection to it, but without having any
special use for, or interest in, the statement. It may be, for all I
know or for all I care, that this fact, or position, or inference, or
whatever it is, has the germ of eternal truth in it ; it may give mean-
ing some day to an interpretation of the whole universe in some
peculiarly satisfying form. Whether it does or does not, it is
certainly none of my business here; and I conceive that it is
none of the business of any man who is settling down to study the
phenomena of government from the raw material. A purely
functional psychology from the individual view-point is, of course,
legitimate, but that again is not our problem here.
Leaving then this question of the seLf-existent soul states to
its own devices, we are concerned, so far as the feelings and ideas
go, with not losing any of their value in our social interpretations.
IntelHgent actions, emotional actions, linked actions, trains of
action, planned actions, plotted actions, scheming, experimenting,
persisting, exhorting, compelling, mastering, struggling, co-operat-
ing— such activities by the thousand w^e find going on around us
in populations among which we are placed. There are many
systems of interpreting and valuing them found with them; and
such interpreting and valuing is a phase of all the activity we find,
while here and there it appears in such differentiated forms that it
seems to stand for itself alone. If we can get the activities analyzed
we may be ver>- confident that no feelings and no ideas will get
lost in the process. One man's work may be deficient in the
THE RAW MATERIALS 199
analysis, and do violence to some of the fact that is meant when
certain feelings and ideas are referred to in ordinary speech. But
that man who fails will have his work corrected by others who
get more adequate results than he. No doubt when an adequate
analysis of social activity in any line is made, there will be " feelings"
and "ideas" standing outside, lifting up their voices in wailing at
their neglect. No matter. If such unfortunates cannot show
themselves as representing important phases of the activities
that we are studying, they have no claim to consideration. They
may cheerfully be permitted to wail themselves into oblivion.
One more question remains as to this raw material for the
study of government. Ought we not to draw a distinction in
advance between it and other varieties of social activity, so that
we can have our field of study defined and delimited at the outset ?
The answer is No, Many a child, making paper toys, has used
his scissors too confidently and cut himself off from the materials
he needs. That is an error to avoid. Instead, we shall plunge into
any phenomena or set of phenomena belonging to the roughly
recognized field of government, be it Congress in session, a town
meeting, a murderer's trial, a ballot-box manipulation at election
time, or a mass meeting communicating the oracles of the age.
If any of these things lead us to interesting paths we shall be
prepared to follow them, heedless of definitions. Who Likes
may snip verbal definitions in his old age, \vhe)\ his world has
gone crackly and dry.
CHAPTER VII
GROUP ACTIVITIES
U is impossible to attain scientific treatment of material that
will not submit itself to measurement in some form. Measure
con(iuers chaos. Even in biology notable advances by the use
of statistical methods are being made. And vi^hat is of most
im[X)rtancc, the material the biologist handles is of a kind that is
susceptible of measurement and quantitative comparison all the
way through. The occasional recrudescence of vitahsm in biology
is not irreconcilable with this statement. It simply indicates
that from time to time some investigator directs his attention to
phases of life, ever lessening in extent, which, he holds, are not
measurable by present processes, and which, it pleases him to
feel, will remain unmeasurable.
In the pohtical world, the dictum, "the greatest good of the
greatest number," stands for an effort to make measurements.
Sometimes, of course, it is simply the rallying-cry of particular
causes. If we take it, however, where it pretends to be a general
rule of measurement, we shall find that it applies itself not to
what actually happens in legislation, but merely to what a thinker
in some particular atmosphere beheves ought to be the law;
and this, no matter what systematic content of "goods" is pumped
into it. I hope to make it clear later that even such a generalized
social theory as this is nothing but a reflection, or an index, or a
label, of some particular set of demands made by some particular
section of society. It is not a measure of social facts which we
can use for scientific purposes, and it would not be thus useful
even if logically it could be regarded as a standard of measure-
ment, which, of course, it cannot be without further specification.
Statistics of social facts as we ordinarily get them are, of course,
measurements. But even after they have been elaborately inter-
preted by the most expert statisticians, they must still undergo
GROUP ACTIVITIES 201
much further interpretation by the people who use them with
reference to their immediate purposes of use. As they stand on
the printed page, they are commonly regarded as "dead," and
they receive much undeserved disparagement. But by this
very token it is clear that they do not adequately state the social
facts. People who are in close connection with all that rich Ufe-
activity indicated by the "feehngs" and the "ideas" feel that
the heart of the matter is lacking in them.
But, now, the idea and feeling elements, stated for themselves,
are unmeasureablc as they appear in studies of government. This
is a fatal defect in them. Any pretense of measuring them, no
maftef with what elaborate algebra, will prove to be merely an
attribution to them of powers inferred from their results. Usually
they appear in social discussions with wholly fictitious values, in
support of which not even a pretense of actual measurement is
presented. The measurements of experimental psychology are not
such measurements as we need. They are measurements of
activity looked upon as within the physical individual. The
social content is incidental to them and is not measured.
If a statement of social facts which lends itself better to measure-,
ment is offered, that characteristic entitles it to attention. Pro-
viding the statement does not otherwise distort the social facts,
the capability of measurement will be decisive in its favor. The
statement that takes us farthest along the road toward quantitative
estimates will inevitably be the best statement.
In practical politics a large amount of rough measuring is
done. There is measurement with the sword when one nation
defeats another in war. South American revolutions, which
answer to North American elections, also use the sword as their
standard of measure. Under Walpole the different elements in
pohtics sought equiUbrium in great part by tlie agency of gold
coin and gold-bearing offices. In an election at its best in the
United States, the measurement goes by the counting of heads.
In a legislative body, likewise, the counting of heads appears.
A referendum vote is pohtical measurement.
This measuring process appears in various degrees of differen-
202 'nil. PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
tiation. In a batlli- tlic social quantities, and the measuring of
those (|uanlilies which is taking place on the sjjot, are fused together,
so that one Iuls to make an effort to consider them separately.
IJut in a vote in the federal House of Representatives differentiation
apix-ars. Here a much more complicated measuring process is
carried through, which api)ears fmally in a simphfied form in the
announcement of the vote for and against the project by the tellers.
The student of |)olitical life has some hint of the measurements
in the figures of the vote; but it is necessary for him to measure the
measure, to go far back and examine the quantities that have been in
play to produce the given results. The best of these practical politi-
ail measures arc indeed exceedingly crude. The practical poli-
tician himself is estimating quantities all the time; indeed his
success is in direct proportion to his abiHty to make good estimates.
He may show a preternatural skill. But his skill is of little or no
direct use for the scientific student. The practical poHtician will
never under any circumstances consent to make a plain state-
ment of his estimates; indeed it is rare that he knows how to tell,
even if he should wish to.
The quantities are present in every bit of political hfe. There
is no poHtical process that is not a balancing of quantity against
quantity. There is not a law that is passed that is not the expres-
sion of force and force in tension. There is not a court decision
or an executive act that is not the result of the same process.
Understanding any of these phenomena means measuring the
elements that have gone into them.
If we can get our social Hfe stated in terms of activity, and of
nothing else, we have not indeed succeeded in measuring it, but
we have at least reached a foundation upon which a coherent
system of measurements can be built up. Our technique may be
very poor at the start, and the amount of labor we must employ
to get scanty results will be huge. But we shall cease to be blocked
by the intervention of unmeasurable elements, which claim to be
themselves the real causes of all that is happening, and which by
their s}X)ok-like arbitrariness make impossible any progress toward
dependable knowledge.
GROUP ACTIVITIES 203
I have used the word activity or action thus far to designate the
point of view from which an adequate statement of the phcmomena
must be sought. The activity is always the activity of men. I
might have said ''men" straightway at the beginning, instead of
activity, but "men " has too many implications which it was neces-
sary to keep from creeping in where they would give rise to miscon-
ception. Perhaps now, however, I can discuss the same subject
in terms of men direct.
Human society is always a mass of men, and nothing else.
These men are all of them thinking-feeling men, acting. PoHtical
phenomena arc all phenomena of these masses. One never needs
to go outside of them. One must take them as they come, that is in
the masses in which they are found aggregated. In some cases
and for some purposes this is easy to do. At the time of the Russo-
Japanese war it was easy to take Japan in one mass and Russia
in another and watch them react upon each other. It is easy to
take one of our American states as apart from some other, say
Cahfornia as apart from New York, though the interactions which
would require our taking them in this way are very rare and usually
negligible. It is easy to take the mass, "New York City," and
separate it from the mass, " New York State outside the city."
Similarly in some societies one can take a family group and hold
it fairly distinct from surrounding family groups, for purposes of
examination.
But in the complex modern state it is seldom that our problems
involve masses as sharply separated as these. Take, for example.
New York City and New York State. The state includes the city.
In many poHtical problems involving the two we must hold the
New York City people as city residents, apart from those same
people as state residents. We must keep them distinct in their
two functions. We find them in two groups, which must be sepa-
rated in our analysis. The same physical men arc among the com-
ponents of both, and perhaps they fmd themselves in one group
pulling against themselves in another group. It is exceedingly
hard, indeed almost impossible, to hold such groups apart in terms
of logic — witness the hair-splitting of the lawbooks over state and
f'
ao4
nil'; PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
fcdrral citizenship. Fortunately, it is much simpler in terms of
facts.
Still the (lilTiculty of picturing the nation as made up of groups
of men, each group cutting across many others, each individual
man a comi)onent j)art of very many groups, is by no means incon-
siderable. But the difliculty disappears as practice shows us
how to concentrate attention on the essential features and to strip
olT incidental j)oints which appear to have extravagant importance
btxause of the prepossessions as to the nature of human individ-
uality with which the task is approached. With increased facility
in thus observing society we find we are coming to state more and
more adequately the raw material of poUtical life. If a law is in
question, we find that our statement of it in terms of the groups of
men it affects — the group or set of groups directly insisting on it,
those directly opposing it, and those more indirectly concerned
in it — is much more complete than any statement in terms of self-
interest, theories, or ideals. If it is a plank in a poUtical platform,
again we find we can state its actual value in the social process at
the given time in terms of the groups of men for whose sake it is
there: a group of politicians and a number of groups of voters
holding the prominent places.
The whole social life in all its phases can be stated in such
groups of active men, indeed must be stated in that way if a useful
^analysis is to be had. Sometimes the groups, although not terri-
torially distinct, gain a marked separation, so that two opposing
parties may face each other with well- closed ranks. Then again
all is seemingly confusion, and the crossed lines of different groups
seem too tangled to be followed.
What a man states to himself as his argument or reasoning or
thinking about a national issue is, from the more exact point of
view, just the conflict of the crossed groups to which he belongs.
To say that a man belongs to two groups of men which are clash-
ing with each other; to say that he reflects two seemingly irrecon-
cilable aspects of the social life; to say that he is reasoning on a
question of public pohcy, these all are but to state the same fact in
three forms. How was it with a cattle-raiser during the campaign
GROUP ACTIVITIES 205
for the passage of a meat-inspection law by Congress in the spring
of 1906 ? All cattle-raisers had interests both as producers and
consumers (I will presently return to this use of the word interest
and justify it). Some reflected their producers' interest so strongly
that it quickly dominated; they arrayed themselves with the oppo-
sition to the bill. Others, a much smaller number, it is true,
reflected their producer's interests on broader hnes, or reflected
primarily the consumers' interests of the country, and found them-
selves lined up with the group behind the President. It is not the
set of reasonings put forth by men on either side, but the position
that they assumed, which had its roots — for the mass — much
deeper than the reasonings, that is the vital poHtical fact. The
reasonings help us in the analysis, but only as indicating where to
look for the facts; and one token is that in most cases the reason-
ings, at least the elaborate reasonings, come long after the assump-
tion of position on the question, and as supplementary to it, and
explanatory of it.
When one hears a loud public outcry against "corporations,"
it is easy to prove logically the folly of the outcry, but such proof
is irrelevant and immaterial for genuine study of what is happening
in society. The outcry, just as it is heard, indicates certain very
real group facts, and these facts are themselves the vital facts of
the process. The people afflicted with "corporationphobia" are
much better justified in sneering at their intellectually arrogant
critics than are the latter in sneering at them.
It is possible to take a Supreme Court decision, in which
nothing appears on the surface but finespun points of law, and cut
through all the dialectic till we get down to the actual groups of
men underlying the decisions and producing the decisions through
the differentiated activity of the justices. In most cases this sub-
stantial basis of the decisions does not readily appear, because of
the foundation of habitual activity on which the facts rest. But
in exceptional cases, as when the court strikes out on a new line
of precedent or gives a decision of a kind which, say, ten years
earlier it would not possibly have rendered, the analysis can be
made with comparative ease.
jo6 riii: PROCESS or government
TluTc is ampU- reason, tlu-n, for examining these great groups
of acting men dircclly and accepting them as the fundamental
facts of our investigation. They are just as real as they would be
if they were territorially separated so that one man could never
Ixlong to two groui)s at the same time. They lose nothing in
reality Ix-cause one man may belong to two conflicting groups and
may Ix- tossed uj) and down for a long time before he settles for
the linal steps of the process with one group to the exclusion of the
others. They are vastly more real than a man's reflection of them
in his "ideas" which inadequately interpret or misinterpret to him
his course; which, as speech activity, help to reconcile him with
the groups he deserts, and which help to estabhsh him firmly with
the group he finally cleaves to. Indeed the only reality of the
ideas is their reflection of the groups, only that and nothing more.
The ideas can be stated in terms of the groups; the groups never
in terms of the ideas.
Every classification of the elements of a population must involve
an analysis of the population into groups. It is impossible — at
least, for any pending scientific problem — to make a classification
so comprehensive and thorough that we can put it forth as "the"
classification of the population. The purpose of the classification
must always be kept in mind. This is because of the limitless
criss-cross of the groups. It would only be in a rigorous caste
organization of society, or perhaps in a very severe slavery in
which one race held another in subjection, that the groups would
so consolidate in separate masses of men that a classification — as,
say, into white nfesters and black slaves — would serve for all the
leading purposes of investigation. In nearly all cases of govern-
ment with which we have to deal, and, I think I can say in prac-
tically all cases in modern society — excepting certain extreme cases
of war, and these are more apparent than real — the varying sets
of interests will not so settle or consolidate themselves upon masses
of men as to make any one classification adequate for aU interests.
To illustrate, even in the case of our American Ci\il War, with
North arrayed against South, there was a great array of groupings
GROUP ACTIVITIES 207
on other than war lines which cut across the war frontier. These
reasserted themselves as soon as union was achieved, and would
have reasserted themselves, though with more effort and less
manifest result, had disunion been the outcome.
Perhaps I may be permitted to offer a geometrical picture of
this mixture of the groups, under the assurance, however, that no
proof depends on it, and that it pretends to be nothing more than
a crude attempt at illustration. If we take all the men of our
society, say all the citizens of the United States, and look upon
them as a spherical mass, we can pass an unUmited number of
planes through the center of the sphere, each plane representing
some principle of classification, say, race, various economic inter-
ests, reUgion, or language (though in practice we shall have to do
mainly with much more spcciaUzed groupings than these). Now,
if we take any one of these planes and ignore (the others, we can
group the whole mass of the sphere by means of an outline or
diagram traced upon the circle which the plane makes by its inter-
section with the sphere, and by partition walls erected on this
outline at right angles to the circle. Our principle of classification
may include the whole population, or it may have to allow for a
section of the population indifferent to it; but the latter case can
equally well be allowed for in the diagram. Similarly, by means
of some other plane together with partition walls perpendicular to
it, we can group the whole population on a different basis of classi-
fication : that is to say, for a different purpose.
Assuming perhaps hundreds, perhaps thousands, of planes
passed through the sphere, we get a great confusion of the groups.
No one set of groups, that is, no set distinguished on the basis
of any one plane, will be an adequate grouping of the whole
mass.
In case the planes should revolve till a great proportion of them
came to coincide, we would possibly, though even then not cer-
tainly, be able to take a single grouping as roughly giving us " the "
grouping of the mass. A very rigorous caste system, as before said,
will somewhat answer to this condition, or two nations in war time,
where we ignore the "habit back":round" on which the war is
208 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
fouK'lil and a lot of olhcr factors which still exist, though b'ttle vocif-
erous, (Ifspitc the war.
In f^reat modem nations we are indeed often told that such a
mass f,'rouping, such an all-embracing classification, does actually
exist in the form of the classes that enter into the class war of
socialism. No socialist or other person has made an analysis,
howfver, which can in any sense be said to prove that this hard
grouping exists; nothing better is offered than emotional assump-
tions and class "ideas." Moreover the observed reactions in our
societies are not such as would follow from such a grouping in
which the criss-cross had disappeared, and sharply defined out-
lines were traceable — the war in fact is not to the finish, the social-
ism that extends itself to large portions of the population is, wher-
ever we know it, a socialism that ends in political compromises.
And compromise — not in the merely logical sense, but in practical
life — is the very process itself of the criss-cross groups in action,
A classification into farmers, artisans, merchants, etc., will
answer some purposes in studying our population, but not others.
A classification by race answers some purposes, but not many unless
it is fortified, as it may or may not be, by the coincidence with it of
the planes of many other group classifications. One would be
hard put, for example, to justify emphasis on a distinction between
Germans and English in treating the local pohtics of a city like
Chicago. And the same would be true of other races, Italians,
Poles, or any that are present in no matter how large numbers,
regarded as groups to be distinguished from one another by the
race test alone, and acting as such in the poHtical field. "Repre-
sentation of the race on the ticket" and to some extent, also, a
difference in attitude toward the liquor problem, w^ould be about
all that one could find in the way of lines of activity, and even that
would probably be exaggerated out of all proper proportion by
those who talked about it.
.1 " The great task in the study of any form of social life is the
rN analysis of these groups. It is much more than classification, as
. J^that term is ordinarily used. When the groups are adequately
> stated, ever}-thing is stated. When I say ever>'thing I mean every-
t
GROUP ACTIVITIES 209
thing. The complete description will mean the complete science,
in the study of social phenomena, as in any other field. There
will be no more room for animistic "causes" here than there.
But it is not our task in this work to make an analysis of the
groups that operate in the whole social life. We are to confine our
attention to the process of politics, and the political groups are the 1
only ones with which we shall be directly concerned. And indeed, '
our taskjjv_en here concerns the method of analysis, not the exact
statement of the groups that are operating at any particular time
or place.
It would at first sight seem that the political process could not 'I
be studied till the process of the underlying groups had been studied, |
for political groups are built up out of, or, better said, upon, the I
other groups. Political groups are highly differentiated groups 1
reflecting, or representing, other groups, which latter can easily, \
and I believe for most purposes properly, be regarded as more I
fundamental in society. The political process goes on, so to ^
speak, well up toward the surface of society. The economic basis
of political life must, of course, be fully recognized, though it does
not necessarily follow that the economic basis in the usual limited
use of the word is the exclusive, or even in every detail the domi-
nant, basis of political activity.
Nevertheless, it is my conviction that pohtical groups, highly
differentiated as they are, can well be studied before the other
groups ; and that indeed one has better chance of success in study-
ing the pohtical groups first than in studying the other groups first.
The very fact that they are so highly representative makes it easier/
to handle them. They are in closer connection with "ideas,"
"ideals," "emotions," "poUcics," " pubHc opinion," etc., than are
some of the other groups. I would better say, they work through
a process of ideals, etc., more plainly than do the deeper-lying
groups. And as the same psychic process, including all its ele-
ments, is involved in the facts which enter into the interpretation
of all forms of social Ufe, we have better prospects of successful
work in a field in which we can get it, I will not say in most
direct, but in most manifest, most palpable, most measurable
2IO THK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
form. li 1 may be pardoned a re-mark from my own experi-
tncc, I \vill say that my interest in politics is not primary, but
derived from my interest in the economic life; and that I hope
from this ix)int of approach ultimately to gain a better under-
standing of the economic life than I have succeeded in gaining
hitherto.
We shall confine ourselves then to the groups that appear in
[xMitics, and as they apyxjar in politics. Now the pohtical groups
can never safely be taken to be the same identical groups that we
would analyze out in studies of other phases of the social life.
•The i)olitical action reflects, represents, the underlying groups;
but the political groups will have different boundaries than the
other groups; there will be splittings and consolidations; and
even if as regards the persons belonging to them they are ever the
same, even then they will have different ways of reaction, different
activities; and since the activities are the groups, they cannot prop-
erly be called the same groups under exact discrimination. I do
not mean at all that political parties, the Democratic, Republican,
Prohibition, Socialist, and so on, are the essential groups for a
political study. These are certain of the poUtical groups, but we
have to strike much deeper than their level. We have to get hold
of the lower-lying political groups which they reflect or represent,
just as in turn these lower-hing poUtical groups reflect other groups,
which are not properly speaking political. The "properly speak-
ing," here, has merely to do with the particular plane of discrimina-
tion, the standard or test on the basis of which the group analysis is
made. We shall have to take all these political groups, and get
them stated with their meaning, with their value, with their repre-
sentative quality. We shall have to get hold of political institu-
tions, legislatures, courts, executive officers, and get them stated
as groups, and in terms of other groups. The presidency, for
example, is an institution that includes a considerable number of
men in and out of office — ignoring for the moment constitutional
theory on one side, and a little crackle of arbitrariness at the pin-
nacle on the other — and we must state it in terms of party and in
terms of the nation, or rather in terms of those portions of the
GROUP ACTIVITIES 211
nation stated not in party but in deeper political groupings, which
it represents at any moment or in any period. We shall have
to get all the ideas and policies and selfishnesses that enter into
cu'-rent talk or specialized political talk stated in the same way, as
differentiated activity, as the reflection of lower-lying activity.
When we have done all this in a preliminary manner, when we
have our raw material in hand, then we shall be ready to set up
theories about the relations of the activities. And so we can pass
to a new and more adequate statement and at last to an interpre-
tation, if we have fortune and perseverance, that will stand firmly
the test of application. I do not mean by this, of course, to be
outlining the path of this book, but to be outlining the long road
on which the book is, I hope, taking some steps.
The term "group" will be used throughout this work in a tech-'
nical sense. It means a certain portion of the men of a society, .
taken, however, not as a physicaji^ mass^ut_of[Jrom other miisses
of men, but as a mass activity, \\jiich does not preclude the men
whojaxticipaliLJii^it from participating likewise in many other
group activities. It is always so many men with all their human
quality! IF"is always so many men, acting, or tending toward
action — that is, in various stages of action. Group and group |
activity are equivalent terms with just a little difference of emphasis, '
useful only for clearness of expression in different contexts.
It is now necessary to take another step in the analysis of the
group. 'There is no group without Its Interest.] An interest, as >
the term will be used in this work, is the equivalent of a group. '
We may speak also of an interest group or oi a group interest,
again merely for the sake of clearness in expression. The group
and the interest are not separate. There exists only the one thing,
that is, so many men bound together in or along the path of a cer-
tain activity. Sometimes we may be emphasizing the interest
phase, sometimes the group phase, but if ever we push them too
far apart we soon land in the barren wilderness. There may be
a beyond-scientific question as to whether the interest is responsible '
for the existence of the group, or the group responsible for the
312
rilK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
existence of the interest. 1 do not know or care. What we actually
find in this world, what we can observe and study, is interested
men, nothing more and nothing less. That is our raw material
and it is our business to keep our eyes fastened to it.
The word interest in social studies is often limited to the eco-
nomic interest. There is no justification whatever for such a
limitation. I am restoring it to its broader meaning coextensive
with all groups whatsoever that participate in the social process.
I am at the same time giving it definite, specific content wherever
it is used. I shall have nothing to say about "political interest"
as such, but very much about the multiform interests that work
through the political process.
I am dealing here with political groups and other groups that
function in the specifically social process, and not extending the
assertion that the words group and interest coincide, over all
groups that on any plane can be analyzed out of masses of human
beings. One might put the blonde women of the countr}^ in one
class and the brunettes in another, and call each class a group.
It may be that a process of selection of blondes and brunettes is
going on, and it may perhaps be — I am taking an extreme case —
that it will sometime be found necessary to classify some phase
of that process as social and to study it along with other social
phenomena. I am not expressing an opinion as to that, and I
have no need of forming an opinion. WTiether that attitude is
taken or not will depend upon practical considerations upon which
the investigator himself must pass. I would not say that such a
"group" for other than social studies could properly be described
as having a blonde or brunette interest in the meaning here given
to interest. It would not be a social group, and probably the
equivalent of the interest could be better specified without the use
of that particular word. But that is neither here nor there. The
essential jx)int is that if ever blondes or brunettes appear in political
life a? such it will be through an interest which they assert, or —
what comes in general to the same thing, when the analysis is
fully made— which is asserted for them through some group or
group leadership which represents them.
GROUP ACTIVITIES 213
In the political world, if we take the interest alone as a psycho-
logical quality, what we get is an indefinite, untrustworthy will-
o'-the-wisp, which may trick us into any false step whatsoever.
Once set it up and we are its slaves, whatever swamp it may
lead us to. If we try to take the group without the interest, we
have simply nothing at all. We cannot take the first step to define
it. The group is activity and the activity is only known to us
through its particular type, its value in terms of other activities,
its tendency where it is not in the stage which gives manifest results.
The interest is just this valuation of the activity, not as distinct
from it, but as the valued activity itself.
In using the term interest there are two serious dangers against
which we must carefully guard ourselves. One is the danger of
taking the interest at its owti verbal expression of itself, that is to
say, the danger of estimating it as it is estimated by the differentiated
activity of speech and written language which reflects it. The
other danger is at the far extreme from this. It is that we dis-
regard the group's expressed valuation of itself and that we assign
to it a meaning or value that is "objective" in the sense that we
regard it as something natural or inevitable or clothed in oughtness.
If we should substitute for the actual interest of the activity some
''objective utility," to use the economist's term, we should be going
far astray, for no such "objective utility" appears in politics at all,
however otherwise it may be attributed to the men who compose
the society. It is like the undiscovered and unsuspected gold under
the mountain, a social nullity. A man who is wise enough may
legitimately predict, if he is addicted to the habit of prediction,
that a group activity will ultimately form along lines marked out
by some objective condition which he thinks he detects. But the
interests that we can take into account must lie a good deal closer
to the actual existing masses of men than that.
If we cannot take words for our test, and if we cannot take
"bed-rock truth," one may say we are left swinging hopelessly in
between. Quite the contrary. The political groups are following
definite courses. They may appear erratic, but hardly ever to any-
one who is in close enough contact with them. The business of
^
f
214 rilK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
ihv studt-nt is to plot llu- courses. And when he docs that— it is
the course of only a single step, not of a whole career, that he can
l)lot- he will find that he has all together, the group, the activity,
and the interest.
The essential difTercnce between interest as I am defining it
and the psychological feeling or desire qualities should be already
aiJpannt. I am not introducing any suppositional factor which
can Ik- taken in hand, applied to the social activities and used in
the pretense of explaining them. I am not taking any mental
or other possession which the individual man is supposed to have
before he enters society and using it to explain the society. I am
not dealing with anything which can be scheduled to any desired
extent as a set of abstract general interests, capable of branching out
to correspond with the complexity of the activity of the social world.
I am not using any interest that can be abstractly stated apart from
the whole social background in which it is found at the moment of use.
Theintcrestjrgiit^forwajiiJs_^,sp^ interest in some
definite course of conduct_or_activity. It is first, last, and all
the time strictly empirical. There is no way to find it except by
observation. There is no way to get hold of one group interest
except in terms of others. A group of slaves for example, is not
a group of physical beings who are "slaves by nature," but a social
relationship, a specified activity and interest in society. From the
interest as a thing by itself no conclusion can be drawn. No
fine logic, no calculus of interests will take us a single step forw^ard
in the interpreting of society. WTien we succeed in isolating an
interest group the only way to find out what it is going to do, indeed
the only way to be sure we have isolated an mterest group, is. to
watch its progress. When we have made sure of one such interest,
or group, we shall become more skilful and can make sure of
another similar one with less painstaking. When we have compared
many sets of groups we shall know better what to expect. But
wc shall always hold fast to the practical reality, and accept the
interests that it offers us as the only interests we can use, studying
them as impassively as we would the habits or the organic functions
of birds, Ixts, or fishes.
GROUP ACTIVITIES 215
Such interest groups are of no different material than the "indi-
viduals" of a society. They are actiyity; so are the individuals.
It is solely a question of _.the standpoint from which we look at
the activity to define it. [The individual stated for himself, and
invested with an extra-social unity of his own, is a fiction. But
every bit of the activity, which is all we actually know of him,
can be stated either on the one side as individual, or on the other '>
side as social group activity. The former statement is in the main j
of trifling importance in interpreting society; the latter statement ■;
is essential, first, last, and all the time.] It is common to contrast \
conditions in India or elsewhere in which "the cormnunity is the \
political imit," with conditions in our own society in which "the
individual is the political unit." But in reality such a contrast is
highly superficial and limited, made for special purposes of inter-
pretation within the process. From the point of view here take 1
all such contrasts fade into insignificance except as they are " raw
material" when the special processes in connection with which
they are made are being studied.
When we have a group fairly well defined in terms of its inter-
ests ,/wenextfinditnecessary to consider Jhe factors that enter,
intojts rejaliye power of dominating other groups and of carrying ;
its tendencies to action through their full_course with relatively *
little check or hindrance. As the interest is merely a manner of
stating the value of the group activity, so these factors of dominance
are likewise just phases of the statement of the group, not separate
from it, nor capable of scientific use as separate things.
First of all, the number of men who belong to the group attracts -
attention. Number alone may secure dominance. Such is the
case in the ordinary 'American election, assuming corruption and
intimidation to be present in such small proportions that they do
not affect the result. But numbers notoriously do not decide elec-
tions in the former slave states of the South. There is a concentra-
tion of interest on political lines which often, and indeed one may
say usually, enables a minority to rule a majority. I cannot stop
here to discuss the extent to which majorities arc represented by
2i6 rilK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
minorities undiT such circumstances, but only to note the fact.
Iiitinsity is a word that will serve as well as any other to denote the
concentration of interest which gives a group effectiveness in its
activity in the face of the opposition of other groups.
This intensity, like interest, is only to be discovered by obser-
vation. There is no royal road for scientific workers to take to it.
Catchwords like race, ability, education, moral vigor, may serve
as tags to indicate its presence, but they are of little or no help to
us, and indeed they are more apt to do us positive harm by making
us think we have our solutions in advance, and by blinding us to
the facts that we should study. Mere vociferation must not be
confused with intensity. It is one form of intensity, but very often
the intensity of the talk does not correctly reflect the true intensity
of the group. This must be allowed for.
Besides number and intensity, there is a technique of group
activities which must be taken into account. Blows, bribes, allure-
•ments of one kind and another, and arguments also, are charac-
teristic, and to these must be added organization. A group will
ditTcrentiate under fitting circumstances a special set of activities
for carrying on its work. We must learn how these specialized
activities vary under different forms of group oppositions, how
the tcclmique changes and evolves. We shall find that the change
in methods is produced by the appearance of new group interests,
directed against the use of the method that is suppressed. If
violence gives way to bribery, or bribery to some form of demagogy,
or that perhaps to a method called reasoning, it wiU be possible,
if we pursue the study carefully enough, to find the group interest
that has worked the change. That group wiU have its own tech-
nique, no more scrupulous probably than the technique it sup-
presses, but vigorously exerted through the governing institutions
of the society, or possibly outside those institutions.
Technique will of course vary with the intensity of interest,
as for instance when assassination is adopted by revolutionists who
can find no other method to make themselves felt against their
opponents. Number also has intimate relations with both tech-
nique and intensity. In general it is to be said that there is no rule
GROUP ACTIVITIES 217
of thumb which will point out to us any particular lines of activity
in which the most powerful groups can inevitably be found. We
may sometimes find the greatest intensity over matters that still
seem to us trifles, even after we think we have interpreted them in
terms of underlying groups, and again we may find slight intensity
where we think there ought to be the most determined efi'ort. It
is solely a matter for observation. /And observation shows, here'
as before, that no group can be defined or understood save in terms \
of the other groups of the given time and placeTj One opposition
appears and adjusts itself and another takes its place; and each
opposition gets its meaning only in terms of the other oppositions
and of the adjustments that have taken place between them.
I have been talking of groups as so much activity capable of
definition, each group for itself. When we analyze a group in a
fairly satisfactory way, we usually give it some kind of a name,
and set it off with a certain individuality; thejndhviduality^tjias
is, however, nothing more than the definition of its activity.
At the same time I have said that no group can be stated, or
defined, or valued — I have used various words in this respect —
except inj:erms of other groups. Nogroup has meaning except |
in its relatJMis tq^ other groups. No group can even be conceived
of as a group — when we get right do^^^l close to facts — except as
set ofi' by itself, and, so to speak, made a group by the other
groups.
I have also made preliminary mention of the way in which some
groups represent others, and have indicated the importance of this
representative relation for our further study.
I have not called these group activities forces nor said anything
about forces involved in them. The word force can be used, no
doubt, even in sociology, to indicate phenomena for study, but it
is too apt to drag in some metaphysical suggestion, and in social
studies it connotes almost inevitably the isolated, metaphysically
posited, individual feelings and ideas, which hypothesis places at
the bottom of social life as its causes. Moreover we have little
need for it. If we say activity, we have said all.
2i8 'IIIK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
Now, :us tlu- j)oints 1 have just reiterated imply, the activities \l
arc all knit together in a system, and indeed only get their appear-
ance of individuality by Ix-ing abstracted from the system; they
brace each other up, hold each other together, move forward by
their interactions, and in general are in a state of continuous pres-
sure uix)n one another.
If we take a little dilTerent angle of vision we shall be tempted
to state each group activity, not directly in terms of such and
such other group activities, but as resting in a great sea of social
, life, of which it is but a slight modulation. We shall get the concep-
tion of a "habit backgroimd" in which the group activity operates.
The chapter on law will bring us to close quarters with this phase
of the social process, but the ground must be sketched in advance
before proceeding farther here.
Suppose, for example, we take a modern battle, and note that
it is fought, not with complete abandon, but under definite limita-
tions which forbid certain cruelties, such as the poisoning of springs,
the butchery of the wounded, firing upon Red Cross parties, the
use of explosive bullets, or the use of balloon explosives. Or
suppose we take a political campaign, and note that in one country
the contestants use methods which are not used in another. The
Cuban liberals used methods against President Palma which are
not resorted to in the United States; Tammany uses methods
when it can in connection with the New York City police force which
no j)olitical party uses in London, and which would be injurious
to any party that tried to use them. There are "rules of the game " j
li in existence, which form the background of the group activity. /
Tlicre is no savage tribe so low but that it has rules of the game,
which are respected and enforced. I hardly need to add that a
large part of this habitual activity is commonly discussed in terms
of moral factors.
The habit backgroimd may usefully be taken into the reckoning
as summing up a lot of conditions under which the groups operate,
but reliance on it is apt to check investigation where investigation is
needed, or even become the occasion for the introduction of much
unnecessary m>'sticism. By appealing to the habit background
A
GROUP ACTIVITIES 219
we must not hope to get away from the present in our interpreta-
tions. /Just as ideas and ideals are apt to give us a false whirl into
the future with our investigations, so in somewhat the same way '
the habit background is apt to carry us back into the past and thus
away from our raw materialT] We set up " tradition " as established,
and then we are apt to think that by appealing to tradition, and
by tracing the methods of tradition, we are explaining some social
phenomenon that we have in mind. But indeed if tradition is
anything at all, it is an affair of the present. If we ever handle it |
except as a thing of the present — that is, of the particular date under
consideration — we trust to it as a false support. Long, in point of
time, as may be the trains of activity which we must follow, we
never grasp them except at some present moment. The flight of
an arrow will serve for illustration. We may plot the curve the
arrow follows, but we must study its flight at each moment in terms
of the forces in play at that moment. No arrow "tradition" will
serve any good purpose.
If we have a form of activity traced dovm. from a remote past —
of the kind, say, that is usually called a belief — we have got to
value it in terms of other activity at each moment of its career
which we study. The question is always what other activities does
it represent "now" ? What relations, including oppositions, does
it have with other activities ? What are the underlying interest
groups ? It is certainly true that we must accept a belief group of
this kind as an interest group itself. A totem group, imposing a
certain duty as to the eating or the not eating of the flesh of the
totem animal, is an established interest; it reflects certain other
interests, probably involving the food supply, certain diseases,
demons in the air or forest, or all of them together. If those other
interest groups change in any way, the effect on the totem activity
will be corresponding, whether it is an effect which an outsider
can observe or not. It has a different meaning, a different value ;
in other words, it is a different activity. We cannot carry the
belief up into the present out of the past and be effecting anything
in our work beyond a rough sketch of the surface appearance.
Nothing but the "present" can enter into a scientific balance of !
220 nil; PROCESS of government
the grouj) aclivilii'S against one another to show their tension and
cohesion and lines of development.
Another dinu uUy which may arise from a misuse of the concep-
tion of the habit haek<,'round needs mention. It is easy to general-
ize the background so much that one thinks he finds in it a "social
whole" which he can treat as an active factor in his interpretative
work. We are often told that social interests or social welfare
demands this thing or that thing; that this custom or that institu-
tion has survived because it furthers the welfare of society. I do
not want to go beyond my proper range in discussing this difficulty,
but for i)olilical phenomena I think I am justified in asserting
positively that no such group as the "social whole" enters into the
interpretation in any form whatever. Where we have a group that
participates in the political process we have always another group
facing it in the same plane (to revert to the illustration of the sphere).
It is true that if we have two nations at war we can treat for the
purposes of the war, though only to a certain limited extent, each
nation as a separate group; but it is clear that under such circum-
stances neither nation is the "social whole;" it takes the two
together to make the society whose processes we are at the time
studying. |_On any political question which we could study as a
matter concerning the United States, for example, alone, we should
never be justified in treating the interests of the whole nation as
decisive. There are always some parts of the nation to be found
arrayed against other parts. It_ is onlyby passing from the exist-
ing, observed, actual interests to the "objective utilities" I have
mentioned above that we can drag in the "social whole," and there_
we are out of the field of social science. Usually we shall find, on
testing the "social whole," that it is merely the group tendency or
demand represented by the man who talks of it, erected into the
pretense of a universal demand of the society; and thereby, indeed,
giving the lie to its owti claims ; for if it were such a comprehensive
all-embracing interest of the society as a whole it would be an
established condition, and not at all a subject of discussion by the
man who calls it an interest of society as^a whole ; except again
when it is idealistically "objective" but humanly impossible.! It
GROUP ACTIVITIES 221
is easy to say that it is to society's interest that airy, light lodgings
should be provided for all the citizens. But it is plain that what
is meant is that from some particular group's point of view, this
"ought to be to society's interest;" for it is very clear that the actual
interests now existing do not include it either among all tenants
or among all landlords. It is easy again to say that "murder is
against the social interest," but even if wc ignore riot-suppression,
police work, judicial executions, wars, and so forth, this "social
interest" that is appealed to is not actually the interest of all the
people. For besides the continually recurring crimes of passion,
and the murders by professional thieves, there is a vast amount of
homicide in routine features of our commercial life, such as railroad
operation, food manufacture, sweat-shop clothes-making, and so
on. And such murders answer to existing interests. All asser-
tions of this kind need very careful qualification in any uses; and
indeed need to be abandoned entirely to get any approximately
exact statement of the processes under way for scientific investi-
gation.
It may seem overstraining the point to say that in any community
of Australian savages in which the main totem rules work continu-
ously without a breach, in any Indian village in which crime is
unknown for years at a time, it is wrong to speak of an " interest of
the whole." But here the " interest of the whole " would be simply
a statement of the established social habit, and whatever change
came about in it would be brought about by changing conditions,
or in other words by changing group interests; indeed should we
go under the surface we could no doubt find a powerful and very
definite group interest sustaining the habit by effectively suppress-
ing diverging tendencies.
In the case of the totem tribe we might envisage the community
of men and women as in opposition to the demon community,
which is a very real social factor, however much the schoolboy
may laugh at it; but the demons themselves would prove to have
their meaning in terms of groups of the population. In the case
of the Indian village, it may be that a very simple community under
very favorable conditions of life — I mean food supply, instruments
222 mi': PROCESS of government
of production, etc. — shows the disappearance of certain tendencies
which WI-, from our own exjx-rience, think ought to be present. In
that case we might say that the tendency or interest was not present
simi)ly because the condition at which it is normally taken by us
to Ix- directed was not present. On these questions we need not
pass judgment here. I have let them come into the text merely
to broafkn the issue.
As for jKjlitical questions under any society in which we are
J called u\K>n to study them, we shall never find a group interest of
the society as a whole. We shall always find that the political inter-
^ ests and activities of any given group — and there are no political
i phenomena except group phenomena — are directed against other
activities of men, who appear in other groups, political or other.
The phenomena of political life which we study w^ill ahvays divide
the society in which they occur, along lines which are very real,
though of varying degrees of definiteness. The society itself is
nothing other than the complex of the groups that compose it.
CHAPTER VIII ^
PUBLIC OPINION AND LEADERSHIP
Leadership and public opinion are two fundamentally impor-
tant, interlinked phases of the group process in government. They
appear in all degrees of differentiation, from the leader who springs
forth for the moment, from the public opinion which is an expres- >
sion of the work immediately in hand, up to organized, firmly set p
rule, up to definite policies and programmes with complex theoreti- I
cal statement. They connect at either end with what has been
called the habit background, from which they spring, into which
they lead.
/ Leadership is not an affair of the individual leader. It is fun-
/ damentally an affair of the group. Pomp and circumstance are
but details. Leadership by an individual leader is not even the
typical form. It is only a minor form; or, what comes to the same
thing, leadership can most often be given an individual statement
only from certain minor and incidental points of view. [The great k
phenomena of leadership are phenomena of groups differentiated jl
for the purpose of leading other groups. One specialized group ' -
leads certain other groups in a special phase of their activity.
Within it are the phenomena of individual leadership in various
grades, j
Public opinion is also a phenomenon of the group process.
There is no public opinion that is not activity reflecting or repre-
senting the activity of a group or of a set of groups. There is no \
public opinion that is unanimous, none indicating the existence of \
any "social whole," such as we have considered and rejected in
the preceding chapter. The unanimity of opinion is as much a \
myth as the individuality of leadership. Sometimes public opinion
appears in differentiated forms in which it stands out very clearly
as itself group activity; at other times it is less specialized, less
easy to grasp from this point of view, but it is none the less activity.
223
/
224 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
I'ublic ()i)inic)n, j)ul>lic sentiment, anrl public will are three phrases
wliich are at times distinguished from one another, but they all
indicate the same group activity. The difference in the shading
of the words is not a difference that we meet with among social
facts. The three words, opinion, sentiment, and will, are the
products of individual psychological analysis, not of direct analysis
of social phenomena at first hand. If the term "public opinion"
were not so well established one of the others might better be used,
as indicating more closely the activity which the word "opinion"
but crudely describes. However, it is best to take it as we find it.
Leariership and public opinion can properly be given their
preliminary discussion in close association. Public opinion itself
has leadership and is leadership. From the opposite point of view
leadership is found sometimes working directly through widely
jorganized public opinion, and in all other cases it is connected
directly with the public opinion of a narrow group, and indirectly
with the vaguer public opinion of larger groups. The justification
of this joint treatment must appear as we proceed wdth this chapter.
After we have discussed in detail the group process in government
(chaps. X to xviii) we shall seek in chap, xix a more comprehensive
statement of the phenomena in terms of discussion groups and
organization groups.
In considering leadership I am not going to pay any attention
to differences from the individual point of view\ The studies that
have been made by others on those lines have a recognized value.
My object here is of another nature. It is to show how all forms
of individual leadership require statement in group terms, and such .
tyjx-s as I give emphasis to will be chosen solely from this point
of view. I shall discuss in turn, but without endeavoring to hold
them sharply distinct, leadership of group by group, "boss"
leadership, demagogic leadership, and the leadership of the ruler
or mediator.
There is plenty of group activity in society without spe^alized
Icatlership. But a political group is, by the very fact of its dif-
ferentiation as political, itself a case of leadership, and within it
PUBLIC OPINION AND LEADERSHIP 225
in turn we shall find organized leadership, probably in several
degrees. For example, let us take the organization of a national
political party. The leadership of the chairman in the executive
committee, of the executive committee in the party, of the conven-
tion in the party, of the party among the underlying groups and
interests which it represents — all these kinds of leadership are not
phenomena of different, but of the same, nature, when one cuts
down to essentials. The party gets its strength from the interests 1
it represents, the convention and executive cormnittec from the
party, and the chairman from the convention and committee. In j
each grade of this scries the social fact actually before us is leader-
ship of some underlying interest or set of interests.
Or take the case of any government organ, as, say, a legislature.
It is a specialized group, itself an activity, representing other
group activities among the people which are organized through
it. It gets all its power, all its meaning, from those other activities.
Within it again there is leadership of several kinds, as seen in the
speaker, in the party floor leaders, perhaps also in the "boss" in
or behind it. This leadership gets its meaning from the legislative
body, and ultimately from the interests behind that body. The
phenomena are not dissimilar, but closely related. At every stage
we are dealing with the differentiation of activity.
The leadership which one group performs for another or for :
a set of other groups is not dependent upon the express adhesion ]■
of the full membership of the represented groups. Dissent by a
member of the group may not take him out of the ranks. Under
some circumstances it will, or rather it represents his actual transfer
to another group position; but under other circumstances dissent
may be a wrong expression of grouj) position, and the dissenter may
be actuaUy arrayed in co-operation with his supposed opponents,
and lending force to their movement. One must not put a false
stress on every declaration a man makes about himself socially,
any more than on the traditional " woman's no." I have diagnosed
more than one case, for example, in which men who dislike Roose-
velt and denounce him bitterly in all their spare time are actuaUy
being represented and led by him, and are lending him their sup-
226 IIIL PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
])()rt in fact, though not in profession. So radicals and even
revolutionists are actually represented in many of their interests
by the very government which they are denouncing and which
they think they are trying to destroy.
The socialists claim to be representing the entire proletariat
as one group. Now suppose there really is such an actual effective
group as the proletariat, the socialists will draw a certain amount
of strength from the parts of it which do not affiliate with them, or
even tolerate them. This proletariat interest must be, remember,
not an " objective utility " or " ought to be " on the one side, and not
mere vociferation on the other, but a substantial activity tending
toward palpable results. The socialists are a "danger" just as
they have such a group underlying them. Their policies, or rather
concrete portions of their policies, are gaining recognition even
from self-styled unfriendly sources on that basis. I am not plan-
ning to abuse this point by making arguments rest upon it, but
merely calling attention to a possible situation.
Let us take a less disputable illustration. It is common for
cities to prescribe the width of wagon-wheel tires in proportion
to the load carried, so as to save the pavements from the injury
caused by narrow tires and heavy loads. In a city in which such
a regulation does not exist, but where conditions make it important,
a movement for it is begun. Some of the taxpayers will organize.
They will lead the others. These others, however, although
actually suffering in equal degree will be indifferent, and often
really ignorant of the fact that any such movement is under way.
Common speech w^ill say they do not "know" their own interests.
Success will not be easy to achieve, for the team-owners will strenu-
ously resist the adoption of the regulation. Nevertheless the move-
ment, or some substitute for it, is bound to win after a greater or
less time. It will win because the organization that leads it genu-
inely represents the mass of indiflferent taxpayers. It will win
because it will be clear that those indifferent taxpayers are poten-
tially comprised in the group activity. There is a tendency to
action among them. If sufficiently goaded they will certainly
come to "know" their own interest. The movement will w^in
PUBLIC OPINION AND LEADERSHIP 227
before all taxpayers are enrolled in it — long before then — and it
will win in part by the strength of the unenrolled. In the argu-
ments that strength will masquerade under some such phrase as a
"just cause," but it itself will be the justice. In attributing
strength to leadership from such a source as this we must, as ever,
be cautious not to jump at conclusions. The only way we can
discover it is by actual observation. "Objective utilities" and
mere verbal adherence are not proof. In each case we must get
to the bottom of the conditions by hard work in investigation.
There is no essential difference between the leadership of a
group by a group and the leadership of a group by a person or
persons. The strength of the cause rests inevitably in the under-
lying group, and nowhere else. The group cannot be called into
life by clamor. The clamor, instead, gets its significance only
from the group. The leader gets his strength from the group. ^
The group merely expresses itself through its leadership.
This is not to say that there is no difference between man and
man in the capacity for leadership. Nothing is more evident than
that there is in fact just such a difference. Some adult men, just
as one finds them, will fit certain group needs of leadership, and \
others will fit other group needs ; some will answer best at one time,
others at another; some perhaps will not do at all as leaders in any
group activities which we are apt to have under investigation.
Given a specialized group in a special phase of activity, and A will
answer its purposes better than B. The group will probably
secure A for its leader. If instead it secures B, its activities may
suffer to some extent. When we are superficially writing superfi-
cial varieties of history we tend to tell the whole story in terms of
A or B. We heap imprecations on their heads or we glorify them.
Perhaps there is a certain correctness within the limits of such
history in making events turn on leaders, but it is within limits
that have very little scientific interest. The "fate of a nation"
may indeed in some rare cases turn on a leader's fitness or unfitness,
but the kind of a "fate of a nation" that does turn in that way is
a bit of sensationalism, with even less relation to the mass of matter
we need to study than a yellow newspaper's headlines have to the
228 11 IK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
news- matter tluil follows them, or to the facts which that ncws-
mattiT is supposed to describe. The individual leader counts
only because he is a i)art of the human mass, and as a part of the
mass. His very personal qualities, which are often so highly
emphasized as causes, are themselves in the main merely group
(facts— they mark his reflection of special phases of the society
around him, and they can better be stated in terms of the groups
.they rellect tlian as purely personal capacities. The differences
llx'twecn men in their capacity of leadership, even more clearly
than elsewhere, are typical social difTcrences/
Let us turn now to the kind of leadership typified by the Ameri-
can political "boss," remembering that we are not concerned with
the content of his service, with his merits or demerits as valued by
himself or others in the midst of the process, but solely with the
process itself. We must examine this kind of leadership under
several aspects. First there is the boss as leader of the political
machine. Then there is the boss taken together with his machine
as leader of a large portion of the voting public, the rank and file
of his party in his territory; but since boss discipline is often very
severe inside the machine, we may sometimes for our practical
purposes best treat the boss himself as leader of this section of the
voting public. Finally there is the boss-led machine, in control of
the organs of government, as leader or ruler or mediator for all
or many of those groups of the population which are w'orking
through government.
Underlying the political machine of the American type we need
the two-party system, resting on a certain great complexity of
national life, which involves a marked political grouping of the
population along the lines of many intense interests; and also a
complex set of government activities, so poorly adjusted that they
provide many rich opportunities for profit. When many interests
are synthesized for political purposes in one political party, which
'Speaker Reed is generally recognized as having been a "strong" man;
Speaker Henderson, as a "weak" man. Yet Reed had one session in which his
power was greatly weakened; while in Henderson's term the power of the office
increased in several important respects.
PUBLIC OPINION AND LEADERSHIP 229.
is a group that represents other groups, and when this party faces
another party of similar character, we observe as a matter of fact
that a strong leadership group organizes itself within the party^
This leadership group attains a very intense interest in self-main-
tenance. Given the special conditions which are summarized in
the phrase, "great opportunities for profit," then the leadership
group presents itself as a "machine." As a machine it is depend-
ent for existence on its success in leading the party, and on its
ability to keep some other machine from ousting it from its leader-
ship, the two factors being related in various ways not necessary
now to point out. The machine is in some respects a hostile band
of marauders in a fertile, but — for the time being — seemingly
helpless country, despite the fact that it holds leadership in the
very country in which it is encamped. The type of leadership
which the boss exercises in the machine grows out of the nature
of the activity itself, and we find strict discipline, arbitrary deci-
sions, and personal loyalty tested in the outcome by the alternatives,
complete authority or else complete overthrow. I am, of course, not
attemptmg to describe all American political machines, but merely
picking a characteristic type of leadership for illustration.
The power of the boss lies in his machine. The power of the
machine lies in the boss only to the extent that the given boss is ;
superior to the next best man (not in any attributed mental or other
ability, but as a definite given man under the circumstances) ; and
this superiority is much less than it is apt to be declared to be by
close onlookers or by conversationalists of one sort or another.
Now the activity of the boss represents the combined political
activity of all the machine members, even when he hardly gives ear to |
any lieutenant. Whether he holds consultations or not is for
our present purpose a technical detail. With or without consulta-
tion there may be factions of the machine that feel they are not
adequately represented, in other words that they are not getting
"fair treatment." When a boss is overthrown it is apt to be by
discontent, conspiracy, and revolution inside the machine. The
relations of the machine to the wider groups it represents have a
good deal to do with the overthrow. They make overthrow easy
230 Till". TKOCKSS OF GOVERNMENT
at times, even when they flo not stimulate it, but the technique
inside the machine will probably be what I have indicated. Weak
leadership is primarily the outcome of quarreling interests, not
vice versa.
The relations of the boss to the machine typify one form of
leadership. It should already be clear that the boss phenomenon
cannot be more than roughly stated without putting it in terms of
the machine itself. Any short cuts which talk about the bad
character of men who fill bosses' positions, or about the indifference
of the individual voters who allow bosses to be elected, and any
generalizations, such as those concerning the decline of the society
which tolerates bosses, are useless until a more complete statement
is given to the facts they indicate.
But this is only one phase of boss leadership. There are also
the leadership by the boss of the party outside the machine, and
the leadership by the machine in the organized government in
which all groups are in tension. In both these aspects the boss
loses some of his dictatorial attributes, and becomes more the
representative in the formal sense, namely a man intrusted with a
certain right to exercise his judgment, being in turn judged for
the use he makes of his powers by the men who have given him
his position : and this often at the very moment when he is being
reviled as a dictator. When he loses elections or falls below what
is expected of him, he is judged as undesirable in the party group.
When he abuses public office too grossly, wastes too much public
money, tolerates too much injurious discrimination between citizens,
he is judged by large sections of the citizenship in subparty group-
ings, and with him his party is judged, so that the subparty interest
dominates the party interest in a certain proportion of the out-
lying party members, leading to a desertion at the polls by the
"indejx^ndent" vote, and to possible loss of a good part of their
power by both boss and machine.
In all this we have nothing but group process, first, last, and
all the time. It is of course not so stated in the attendant dis-
cussions which are a part of the process to be discussed a few pages
farther on. But all the morals and the ideas in which the discus-
PUBLIC OPINION AND LEADERSHIP 231
sion is clothed are but symbols for these group forces. The essen-
tial point is that all this activity, whether envisaged from the point
of view of the boss, or of the machine, or of the party, or of the
public (a general name for masses of groups at certain stages of the
process), has its value and meaning only in terms of the group
opposition. Each group phase of it comes to light in contrast with
some other phase, and all phases together get their definition at
each stage of the process in common. Their transformations,
their surgings and subsidings in their manifest or palpable forms,
go on in terms of each other. They are phases of one common
process, which again for its part can only be stated as the sum of
them all.
With this ever-pending accountability, whether immediate or
remote, first to machine, then to party, and then to "public," the
boss will hold himself and his machine in check to some extent to
keep from overstepping the danger line. But at the same time
he is apt to feel his way carefully and to venture as close as he
deems safe to the danger line. Here he is allowing for "public
opinion," as we say, or, in other words, he is performing, however
meagerly, his leadership duties for certain subgroups which have
perforce trusted their causes to his organization. It is a matter of
common observation, though not worked out by comparison of
carefully analyzed cases as it needs to be, that under ordinary
circumstances a boss under pressure of strong interests directly
behind him, will tend to creep farther and farther forward until
some day he finds he is too far across the danger line to retreat.
The pressure of the machine interest and the interests the machine
directly represents is much more continuous and intense than that
of the subgroup interests, or even than the party interest, and it
finds its way forward till checked by sharp punishment. So the
process goes on, gradually changing in its content and in the limits /
set for it in the habit background.
Pass now to demagogic leadership. If the implication of
insincerity were inevitable in the word demagogue, then that word
would not be well chosen here. But there is ample justification
2^2 IHl': rR(JCESS OF GOVERNMENT
for nsorting to the older usage in which the term demagogue is
f ecjuivalent merely to a i)Oinilar leader. In this sense the word
lends itself well to technical use for a special form of leadership.
Insincerity, as apyilied to the motives of a leader, like any other
interpretation in terms of individual motives, has but trivial impor-
tance in the grouj) process. If wc can take a sound word like dem-
agogue, strip it of that quality, and use it in the sense in which
t)emosthencs would have recognized himself as described by it,
we make that much pure gain.
The demagogue stands in a very different relation to his follow-
ing from that of the boss to his, although in both cases the leadership
can Ix- explained only through the groups that are led by it, and
gets all its meaning from those groups. The demagogue reflects
ihis group through a different technique. As current speech has it,
he operates not through wire-pulling, but through appeals to the
passions with more or less accompanying reasoning. (Wire-pul-
ling, appeals, "reasoning" are, of course, the activity itself, not
something different from it.) He may do this by proxy, as in one
present-day specially notorious American case, but that is only an
interesting instance of the very common phenomenon of syndicated
leadership, already discussed in substance, though not by that
name.
Nevertheless, as leadership, demagogy is a differentiated
activity representing or reflecting the group. The demagogue's
group will be vastly larger than the boss's immediate group, the
machine, and the relationship of the demagogue to the group's
members will be in appearance much more direct and even more
simple. The machine hierarchy is conmionly not found, or is
found only in traces; the group member feels his inspiration
coming direct from the lips of the leader, and is most apt to regard
himself as an unselfish patriot, whereas the machine henchman
operates in good part on a tacit, or sometimes even admitted,
assumption of self-interest. But this question of motives, I repeat,
has very little value for us, and gives us but trifling help in finding
our way through the group process.
The group which the demagogue leads is as a rule highly
PUBLIC OPINION AND LEADERSHIP 233
complex. As a group, that is, it reflects or represents the interests
of a lot of subgroups which may be very different in character
from each other. It gains for itself a simple enough statement
in a demand for some reform, or some related set of reforms, as,
for instance, free silver, or a set of "pure democracy" projects,
but underlying it is a kaleidoscopic field of economic and other
non-political or semi-political groups. The demagogue's group
has its own activity and tendencies, its own interest. It has its
life-history. But this life-history cannot be stated except in the
most superficial way, without putting it in terms of subgroups,
which the demagogic group leads, which it represents, whose
interests it reflects. The life-history of the demagogic group is
the history of the co-operative activity in group form of those sub-
groups, or fractions of them, at a certain stage in their career.
One can state the demagogic group in terms of the subgroups,'
but never the subgroups in terms of the demagogic group.
The demagogic group is not apt to have a long history, and it
is not apt to complete its activity along the lines of its declarations,
though it may do so in part. As it approaches success its subgroups
are apt to assert themselves more and more forcefully, and com-
bine into new political groups that reflect their varying interests'-
more closely. For instance, suppose an " annihilate-the-trusts "
campaign, and assume that it carries a critical election. We may
confidently enough predict that we shall soon find the various
subgroups that have been reflected in this demagogic group split-
ting apart from one another, perhaps on the question as to which
trusts are to be annihilated first, or as to which phase of trust activ-
ity is to be annihilated first ; and the resulting action will be modi-
fied thereby; and this entirely apart from the opposition which the
defeated minority representing the trusts will bring to bear, an
opposition which of itself will modify the lines of operation very
materially from the declared policy.
Despite subgroups and the transformations they occasion, the
demagogic group is itself an interest group and an activity, which
we must be careful to study and estimate at its actual value. We
must trace the modification of the subgroups, due to their cooper-
234 Tin: PROCKSS OF GOVERNMENT
at ion, and vvc must follow the activity lines into the next clcmagogic
group that ai)iK-ars. To a certain small extent platform planks
and catchwords will help us, but in the main we must get below
these to the interests underlying, and get the statement throughout
in terms of them.
In comparing boss leadership and demagogic leadership it is
easy to find certain tendencies of transition between them. The
machine and the boss are most apt to establish themselves upon the
basis of past demagogy. Demagogic leadership, once inj^iUcal
power with a task that requires time to complete, will. tend to
transform itself into boss leadership. Rank bossism is sure to
produce after years or centuries, as the case may be, rank demagogy.
In Russia the bureaucracy, which is bossism, now faces the most
terrible, though sometimes the most necessary, of all demagogy, the
revolutionary uprising of the people. Revolution of this type is
to be distinguished from Spanish-American revolutions, which are
merely primary elections, waged between rival machines by the aid
of a form of violence now abandoned in English America. The
Russian revolutionary movement is an interest group, demagogic
in form, representing subgroups that include the greater part
of the population, working with poor technique against a minority
group of great intensity and highly effective technique. All
through history we find the specialized group which has been called
in to keep order, that is, to represent a lot of subgroups in a com-
mon dififerentiated interest, transforming itself in time into a hier-
archically organized, more or less aristocratic, machine of govern-
ment, and in turn stimulating against itself demagogical group
movements, with operations prescribed by the available technical
methods.
Demagogic leadership carries us directly over to the discussion
of public opinion, but before taking up that latter subject a few
words should be added on the kind of leadership that is found in
the ruler or mediator. We have seen something of this in certain
of the functions of the boss, but the boss is not a good illustration,
because in talking of him we think so largely of his representation
PUBLIC OPINION AND LEADERSHIP 235
of certain special interests that we forget the function he is playing
all the time in connection with larger groups of interests. We can-
not analyze any bit of government very deeply, no matter where
and no matter what its abuses, without becoming aware that it
is holding the balance between conflicting interests, that it is enfor-
cing restraints on their activities in the political field, that it is
standing between them and acting as mediator at the same tima /
it is acting as ruler. We have the mediating functions in a certain'
limited range specified in the courts of justice. This same function,
however, is exercised everywhere in government — in legislatures
and in executives as well. It also is leadership, and, like the other
forms of leadership, it also can be interpreted in terms of groups
and must be so interpreted if we wish to get its full functioning
value. I cannot go into this here for its complexities are many
and it will occupy much of our time later on. Before I get done with
it I hope to show in a satisfactory manner that there is not a single,
function of government of this kind which is not supported on a
powerful interest group or set of groups from which it gets all its
strength and social effectiveness. In every such case where two
opposing groups have their conflicts adjusted or controlled through ^
a ruler we shall find that that ruler is in reality acting as the leader 1
of an interest group or set of groups more powerful than those in [
immediate conflict, and that the adjustment and limitation which
we observe is dictated by that more powerful group.
Public opinion bears something of the relation to government
that talking bears to the full-mouth activities. Lip says, "I am,"
and positively and arrogantly declares to Mouth its primacy, indeed
its uniqueness, in the organism. But Mouth goes right on attending
to business, eating where and when it can. The situation may be
compared with that of the man who declares with intense convic-
tion, "I am a vegetarian," but who confesses that he eats meat
every day, and who explains his meat-eating habit as a triviality,
a mere external circumstance forced on him by the conditions of
life and not affecting in any way his true existence as a being of
thought and feeling, a real vegetarian. When the world agrees
236 Tin: PROCESS of government
to call such [Hoplr vegetarians llicn i)ublic opinion may be admitted
to rule the world, but not till then.
We shall Ix- compelled to refluce public opinion to its proper
i place as activity, reflecting or representing other activities. But
we must do it with caution, for if in the jjrocess we lose any of the
realities for which public opinion stands, and which it represents,
our last state will be worse than our first.
The public-opinion process has been involved in the discussion
of the demagogic form of leadership, and it has been less directly
involved in boss leadership. We are not passing into a new field
when we turn from leadership to public opinion, but making the
analysis from a different angle. It is a case of obverse and reverse,
but our business is to pierce clear through the coin, and not be
content with the pretty pictures on the two surfaces,
r^riiere is no use attempting to handle public opinion except in
terms of the groups that hold it and that it represents. Public
\ opinion is an expression of, by, or for a group of people. It is
(primarily an expression of the group interest by the group itself,
but where it has become a differentiated activity representing an
underlying group we may_say it is expressed by the opinion group
for the underlying group, f As always we must be exact in our
analysis of the representative quality in cases that we describe as
"for the group" : w^e can know nothing there except by intelligent,
carefully controlled observation.
A public-opinion that is supposed to be made up of a certain
collection or fusion of the thin, colorless "ideas" that you read
about in your psychological textbook cannot be found by any pro-
cess I know of in social life. The abstractions, the ideas, all by
themselves, cannot be found. I admit that we often read or hear
such sentences as, " Municipal ownership is good." ' But what
we have there is a speaking, wTiting, printing, reading, hearing
activity. It remains to discover by actual observation w-hat, if
any, connection such a phrase or its reiteration has with the possible
later appearance of municipally o\\-ned street cars in a given city.
To say "municipal owTiership is good" implies something further,
namely, "we want it," or, "we ought to have it," or, "we are tend-
PUBLIC OPINION AND LEADERSHIP 237
ingtoget it," three variations of the same thing. Our "opinion"
is a pushing process in all its stages.
When we examine this public opinion with its onward tenden-i
cies, we fmd that, besides being borne in a group, or given dif-l
ferentiated expression for a group, it always is directed against!
some activities of groups of men. It may specialize in expression
against an individual man, but it concerns even then some group
activity, representative or direct, in which that man participates.
Municipal ownership, for instance, is not any remote thing, to
be discovered apart from men. It docs not exist in the cold of
interstellar space. It is a method of activity. The movement for
it is directed against the activities of certain private owners of
quasi-public enterprises, such as, for example, the street-car lines,
who have been acting in a way that interferes with the activities
of the citizens who became believers in m.unicipal o\Miership. The
demand for municipal ownership does not take its birth out oi
nothing at all. It rises out of certain definitely felt evils among
groups of the population. Inadequate street-car service, illiberal
treatment of patrons who are compelled to patronize the lines, the
corruption of city governments in connection witli franchises, all
these are facts which precede any theories about governmental
functions or any public opinion favorable or unfavorable to muni-
cipal ownership. They themselves grow directly out of group
oppositions and opportunities in the existing state of society, and
they inevitably result in an effort to do away with the evils.
It often happens that street-car owners, for the sake of a few
thousand dollars additional revenue, will refuse to give the travel-
ing public some privilege or convenience, which, if one could
estimate its money value in terms of added facilities, might be
worth millions of dollars to tliem. It is solely because of the
privileged, exclusive position of the company that it can and does
take this attitude. The group reaction of the populace, which
otherwise would attain an adjustment through ordinary competi-
tive process, now concentrates to strike for relief through the
governmental agency. It strikes at the privilege which clinches
the evil fast beyond ordinary means of removal. Reaching out
IIIK I'ROCKSS OF GOVERNMENT
llii- luind to seize is a simple act. That is the municipal-ownership
tendency, notiiing more, nothing less. It is the removal of group
irritation. It is a typical act of government, all the "theories"
of the limits of state activity to the contrary notwithstanding. How -
that tendency actually works itself out is a matter for observation
to discover; the form of group opposition, the methods, and the
limitations of methods, all rest on the habit background at the
given time and i)Iace. It is all a cjuestion of conflicting activities.
But now if this is the nature of the municipal-owTiership move-
ment in fact, how about that "municipal ownership" which one
hears vastly more about, the opinion, the theory, the creed ? It is
clearly a differentiated activity, consisting of talking, wTiting, print-
ing, and so forth, and it clearly has something to do with the
process of municipalizing certain industries in fact. But whether
as excited talking or whether as reasoned theory, for it appears in
both forms, it is only a group activity reflecting other group activi-
ties; it does not control the fates of society, but its fates are
dependent on what society, that is to say, the complex of active
groups in the case, proceeds to do. Those groups may find on
meeting the obstacles in their paths that they can work most
effectively along some other lines, and this they may proceed to
do, leaving the theory group and the agitation group which gave
them expression high and dry. Or again, those underlying groups
may actually push their process through into municipal ownership
as a fact without having given rise to any excited groups of talk
and belief at all. It is solely a question of the particular process,
of the channels it must follow, of the condition as given, in short
of group struggle, and of group leadership of group.
WTiat value has this public opinion in society? It has just
the value of the group that is given expression by it. What tests
have we of it ? None except in the^ examination and analysis of
the group or groups behind it. ^ What is_it thenj* Precisely a
^ /differentiated group activity, expressing, or reflecting, or represent- t
ling, or leading, as the case may be, a group activity, or subgroup ^
activities still lower down m the social massTl It would appear,
then, that, not for any ulterior purpose, buTsimply for the needs
PUBLIC OPINION AND LEADERSHIP 239
of scientific examination of the raw material of the social process,
the group method of interpretation strips off the mystery of public
opinion, and lays it open to analysis and eventually even to measure-
ment, on the same plane with other social facts. If this point is
clear there will be no difficulty in the further analysis of public
opinion as group expression that must now be made. If the point
is not clear that analysis will be meaningless, and indeed if it does
not become clear as wc progress, the whole discussion of leadership,
with its further elaboration in the following chapters will fail of
being understood.
We must examine public opinion under various aspects. We
find it in various grades of differentiation. Again we find it in
various degrees of generality and intensity.
Ordinary public opinion, such as we most commonly refer to
when we use the phrase in American public afi'airs, is very highly
differentiated. Take for example the condemnation of the insur-
ance "grafters " in 1905-6. We saw a highly specialized condemn-
ing and denouncing activity. It appeared more or less strong in
the editorials of almost every newspaper in the country, in a large
part of the sermons, in the casual conversation of friends and of
chance acquaintances alike. It was very definite as a social fact,
a differentiated activity; and this even though every logician,
every political economist, every political scientist, and in general,
every "wise man," should make sport of it for vagueness and
confusion of thought and hypocrisy. It had a small specialized
vocabulary of catchwords of its own. It lasted for a while and ,
then gradually disappeared, having thus as an "opinion-group" /
activity a traceable history. /
Ranging from this organized public opinion down to conditions
of tacit acquiescence or blind restlessness, which arc not called
public opinion at all in current speech, we have the grades of
differentiation of this one type of phenomena. If sane Persia
accepts its sovereign's rule for centuries, so far as we see without
any debate or organized critical thought except among court
cliques, it offers a tacit, undifferentiated public opinion favorable
240 I UK i'rocp:ss of government
to tin- riilr. A Russia, passive under a milder phase of autocracy,
an American city, indifferent to its bosses' use of power, show in
various degrees of difTerentiation the same thing. Perhaps starting
at the bottom with a condition in whch we can hardly find a trace
of |)ublic opinion in a differentiated form, we may ascend to a
higher stage in which a simple approval or disapproval of compli-
cated olTicial acts will be cheered or growled out; thence still
higher to the germs of organization of opinion outside the official
activity and during its progress; thence again through a growing
|Dcrfection of organization of this opinion to an " initiating " opinion,
which finally takes such highly organized forms as we find in the
present-day United States with its thousands of organizations,
often under clever leadership, all working in most specialized
forms as activities, reflecting, representing, leading other activities
of society. This is a mere schematic statement of the gradations
intended only to indicate the progress, but not claiming the author-
ity of fact, an authority which can come only from a thorough
study of the materials and which can be conveyed only by ofTering
the mass of analyzed materials in proof. What I am here saying
must be taken as merely preliminary to the further examination
of the organization and discussion phases of activity in a later
chapter.
In addition to degree of differentiation the degree of generality
and the intensity of public opinion must be considered. Just as
one can nowhere find a "social whole" as a factor in society, so
one can nowhere find a unanimous public opinion which is the
opinion of the whole society, of every member of it. There will
be group arrayed against group and opinion group against opinion
group. The opinion activity that reflects one group, however
large it may be, always reflects the activity of that group as directed
against the activity of some other group. Each group will try to
show that its own opmion activity reflects the activity of the
" whole," or at least of aU of the whole except some loathed mmority.
Each group will claim that its opinion is " public " opinion. It will
bolster up its claim on an elaborate structure of reasoning and
PUBLIC OPINION AND LEADERSHIP 241
assertions of "objective utilities" and of natural and other rights.
A plausible case can often be made out under cover of the complex-
ity of highly differentiated opinion groups which reflect the activi-
ties of a large number of lower-lying groups. INIany different
groups may adopt one policy, that is, become part of an opinion- jT
activity group which reflects all of them, and which takes on a|'
so-called individuality different from any of them. In current
psychological language we say that the men who hold the opinion
hold it for different reasons. When we talk of their reasons in
this way, we, of course, make a very abstract statement of the truth,
in a form so limited that it will never carry us far. When we go
down to the group statement we get down below mere reasoning
to the very basis of reasons.
The intensity of expression which these opinion groups give
themselves in their various forms, from loud clamor to dogmatic
assertion and cold proof, will, like all intensity in social phenomena,
be a factor of the particular occasion, of the group process as given.
The group struggle and the solution of struggle is under way in
every bit of the social process. Sometimes it works through a
friendly suit in a court and sometimes through a bloody revolution.
The manner and intensity of expression which public opinion
assumes depends entirely on the character of the conflicts, on
how deeply they are splitting the groups apart, on how well they
are controlled in the habit background, on how well fortified the
groups are which are being attacked, on what technical facilities
the attacking groups have at their command. Tt is again entirely
a matter for observation.
One very complex opinion group is the big party of the American
political system, the Democratic or the Republican of our gener-
ation. If anyone still feels confusion about the propriety of calling
opinion groups activity like other groups, perhaps a consideration
of the political party will help to clear up the trouble. JThc party .
is from one point of view organized public opinion. This is true *
whatever differentiated leadership groups and whatever dictatorial
leadership it may show. It is true in the same sense that it is
true that all government is the organization of public opinion,
343
IIIK PROCESS OF OOVERNMENT
and in the same sense that it is true that even the most abstract
reasoning is activity. The i)arly occujnes an intermediate positon
in which its activity and its so-called opinion features can better
bt! seen in their unity. We could not discuss parties at all save as
political activities. Tliey would melt away into thin air if we
ventured it. But no hard line can be drawn between the formal
party and even the least formal of the other manifestations of opin-
ion. And no fundamental differences exist between the repre-
sentativeness of opinion groups and the representativeness of
structural organization of society. "Manifestation of opinion"
means a group activity, however we take it. We know no opinion
that is not manifested. We can trace evolving differentiation
between the different stages of the activity, we can watch it pass
farther and farther along in its course, nearer and nearer to those
stages which we call in current speech the results of the action.
But there is never a point from beginning to end at which we can
stop and say: Behind us lies opinion, before us lies action. The
activity ever goes on. Here actions conflict ; at once opinion groups,
opinion activities appear: these pass on, transforming themselves,
organizing, reflecting various subgroups, combining groups, pass-
ing into new stages of activity. Never is the process abandoned
for a moment. When I have said opinion groups, I have merely
made a concession to current language for the sake of more easily
indicating the particular kind of activity immediately under con-
sideration. It is a special form of group activity only as phenome-
nally observed, not as answering in a dififerent way to some exterior
test applied to our social phcnomcnaTl
Taken as activity, our groups will embody the biggest ideals
that may be floating around in society and the most petty, most
"selfish," policies of the smallest fractions of the population.
Moreover they will embody them at their true value, not at any
mystic claim of value; a true value to be discovered by observa-
tion. The group that holds the ideals will be located. It will be
watched at work. The subgroups underlying it will be studied,
and their tendencies toward activity along the lines of the ideal
group will be very carefully examined. The persistence of all
PUBLIC OPINION AND LEADERSHIP 243
the groups, big and little, modest and pretentious, will be tested.
Liberty and equality groups must take their place with other
groups, and stand the same tests.
It is safe to say in general that we shall find that the largest
opinion groups and the most pretentious are in most continuous
need of being interpreted at every step in terms of subgroups, or
layers of subgroups, which are reflected with more or less com-
pleteness by them. With public opinion that is precise, limited,
driven home, that amounts to an expression merely of what social
groups are actually in the process of doing, we can often afford
to let the opinion groups stand as factors, summing up, or express-
ing in shorthand, groups of factors. But with the vaguer, wider,
larger groups, we shall find ourselves sailing the empyrean when
we trust ourselves too much to them without reducing the state-
ment at every step to more exact terms. As we proceed with this
method of interpretation we shall get continually a better under-
standing of the meaning of the much abused terms, organ and
function. The opinion group that is most insistent upon itself
as a "reality" will present itself to us as the analysis becomes more
intimate in the guise of a process, and often a not very essential
process at that, but a mere by-path, so to speak, or at times a
short cut. For every different group position that we personally
adopt for the time being as we look out upon society, different
activities will appear to us as the realities, and different activities
as mere functioning. For every different position we take there
will be a different "truth." It will be only as we get all the group
activities together, and all valued in the terms of each, each valued
in the terms of all, that we shall be able to set up a scientific truth ;
and even then our results can claim to be truth only in the sense
that they will "work" for more cases, for longer lines of activity,
with more exactness, than the group "truths" we have relegated
to lower rank as mere processes.
One other point remains to be made 'before passing for the
present from this subject. In the foregoing pages I have had
nothing to say of interest groups, and have hardly used the term
.■11 llli: PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
inlcrcsl at all. It has been better not to let the current speech-
contrast between interest anrl o])inion force itself intrusively into
the discussion. ()j)inion grou])S, however, are merely one variety
i, of interest groups. Like all other groups they must be stated in
"'.their interest terms. No interest group "exists which cannbt"l)e
reflected by an opinion group, but for many we find no organized,
(h'lTerentiated opinion group in our material, merely because activity
' I in thai form is not called for, does not in fact appear, as the social
process haj)pens to be working at the given time. Nothing turns
' on the distinction between interest and opinion. All turns on the
observed and observable facts as to the ^activities in their values
and along their lines of development. ^What interest groups are
most active, what are dominating, what are absorbing others into
themselves to their increased activity, what are the representative
relations between them ; all this, as a matter of plain fact, is involved
in the scientific question about society. This when answered will
give as much knowledge of the scientific kind as is obtainable
about the social process.!
CHAPTER IX
INDIVIDUAL ENDOWMENT AND RACE TYPE
It may be said that the groups I have been describing are
themselves "up in the air;" that, even though they consist of the
actual activities of actual men, they are floating free, when they
ought to be pinned down to the endowments which the individual
men who are the members of the group bring to it in advance. I
have said a good deal that bears on such objections already, but
I am going to take the time and space to say more, especially as
the discussion will lead up to the question of race type, concerning
which we should be at rest before proceeding to the further analysis
of the institutions of government.
The alleged individual endowment presents itself to us either
as physical or as psychical; or rather, to be more exact, it is dis-
cussed sometimes as the one, sometimes as the other; for the line
in such discussions is not well drawn in fact, even when it is pre-
sumed to be in theory, and the argument is apt to shift at critical
moments from one set of terms to the other in a way that is not
conducive to trustworthy conclusions.
So far as the individual endowment regarded as psychical is
concerned, I have surely said enough in Part I to make it unneces-
sary to go into details here. I will only recall that psychical factors
regarded as causes proved to be mere shadows of what they were
supposed to explain. Certainly, now, if there is any validity at
all in my argument, one cannot hope to bring the social groups
down from their alleged floating position "up in the air" by trying
to hitch them on to any individual endowment of this nature. We
must remember that in one sense all science is "up in the air."
It does not have absolute validity. It is the construction of the
scientist's mind, to use the current phrase; it is all conception,
not perception, to take another similar way of phrasing. To give
our groups the appearance of being "pegged do\\Ti" by using ficti-
245
246 Till': PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
tious pegs will not give tlum any more scientific validity. I am
not asserting that never, nor in any way, a more than scientific truth
will be reached through the study of human social living. I am
asserting only that 1 am not after such results myself, and that
within the range in which I am working there is no utiUty in
demanding such absoluteness. It is at any rate the duty of any-
one who thinks he can increase the substantiality of the groups
by any such means to prove his point, not assume it.
Turning to individual endowment regarded as physical, we have
a form of statement which so far as it goes is much more trust-
worthy, but which goes only a very little way. In speaking of
instincts in chap, i, sec. v, I forecast what is to be said here. The
illegitimate use of instinct, the psychic use, is found when one
localizes an instinct somewhere in a low form of soul and makes it
"explain" the instinctive activities. The legitimate use is found
when one comes to close quarters with the facts and studies the
instinctive activity dkectly. But here all depends on how far the
instinctive activity, as one finds it in its specific form, can be traced
forward into the network of social activities, and shown to persist
just as it is.
Note, however, that activity of this kind, the physical endow-
ment of the individual, is material identical in kind with that
which I myself insist on using as the exclusive material of our study.
The only difference is that it is put forward as capable of individual
statement, whereas I believe I find as a matter of fact that most of
it is capable of adequate statement only in terms of masses of men
living together under given conditions. It is strictly a question of
fact between the two methods of statement as to which is the most
useful, or rather as to the exact range of cases in which each is the
most useful. I will admit without argument that wherever any
investigator isolates a definite manner of reacting in the individual
in society, a manner of reacting so definite that it stays clear and
distinguishable through whatever reasonable range of variations in
the environment it may be followed, so definite that it can be
passed on from father to son without any greater variation on the
average than is found in the inheritance of the color of the hair
INDIVIDUAL ENDOWMENT AND RACE TYPE 247
or eyes, the height, or the shape of the skull, there we will be pro-
vided with a statement of the facts that is simpler and more useful
than the group statement I am urging. But as to the possibility
of bringing the groups down from that alleged position "up in the
air" by connecting them with individual physical endowment, it
is evident that this will result only where and when the individual
statement is more adequate than the group statement. And that
is to be shown only by the practical test.
Suppose now we examine certain phases of activity which are
capable of individual statement, and see how far that statement
remains useful for all social facts in connection therewith. Man is,
for instance, an eating animal. The physiological side of this
eating activity can be studied in the individual organism. How-
ever, even the biologist must look for answers to many of his ques-
tions about it in the species regarded as a whole. If we take the
food supply operations of society, we find certain limits set to
them by the physical side of the individuals as we have just been
stating it. Some materials cannot be digested; other digestible
materials are poisons. But within the limits there is wide range
for alternatives, and food customs and techniques are built up in
society which cannot be stated merely in terms of the environment,
nor merely in terms of the individual physique, but which can only
be stated in terms of the activities of men in the groups in which
they are found. Starting with the endowment of stomach and
mouth you cannot possibly build up an interpretation of the eco-
nomic activities of society.
Then there is sex. As the given fact, human beings are bisexual
and the two sexes can be traced back in the line of evolution far
beyond the point at which one first finds social phenomena in our
human sense. Also as the given fact, there arc customs and insti-
tutions in society in which sex plays a prommcnt place. But sex
is by no means all there is to marriage, and indeed I should want
proof before asserting that sex was even the dominant element in
marriage, save perhaps in the most ephemeral unions of savages
and of the gilded circles of civilization where divorce is easy.
Marriage is a forming, a shaping, an organizing of social material
248 Tin: PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
of wliicli one viry important and characteristic clement is sex,
and our (lueslion of social interpretation has to do just with these
forms of organization. Why does the sex relationship appear in
organizations of one form here and other forms there ? Clearly
sex as a presocial endowment of the individual is not going to
answer that question, nor is even a very specifically stated physical
human sex going to answer it.
Consider next the power of the individual organism to resist
disease. We know how a people may grow immune to such dis-
eases as consumption, and how the capacity to endure city life
may be acquired by a race. We know that while a disease is
running its course in a society it may change the amount of the
human materials, and may sometimes change very radically the
character of the interest groupings. But we cannot build any of
our social facts up out of the disease and resistance facts themselves.
These underlie society like the oxygen of the air, like light and heat
and gravitation. In interpreting society we must deal with the
interest groups, perhaps as modified by plagues, perhaps as react-
ing against plagues through government. This is true even when
our quarantine and sanitation is intrusted by us to experts at the
seat of government, a phase of the subject which will be discussed
later in its proper place.
Or perhaps it is a question of the physical subjection to intoxi-
cation, and of a theory — which apparently rests on a number of
confusions even in its physiological statement — that society will
never get rid of drunkenness till men become unintoxicable, or
constitutionally unwilling to drink to excess. No matter. We
have to observe how groups of men, actually using intoxicants in
given social forms and ways, reflect their interests through other
groups, rouse group opposition, and work in the social structure
along certain lines. We have to observe just what course the groups
take toward each other, what their group power of resistance and
attack is, and what groups survive and how; and all this regardless
of any theory as to when the end of intoxication will be reached.
The activity of the man with the theory is itself a social fact which
must be noted, but only for what it actually is. Just so far as the
INDIVIDUAL ENDOWMENT AND RACE TYPE 249
theory is the sign or the mark of a group activity will its importance
grow in our study.
In all these cases we find the social institutions growing up
within the limits of the range of ready adaptability of the indi-
vidual's physical characteristics; and hence not to be interpreted
as due to the existence of those characteristics broadly stated as
such.
By all means the most important phase, however, of the physical
endowment of the individual has to do with the nervous system.
We may properly say that such human society as we know would
be impossible without the developed nervous system, without brain.
And yet brain does not explain society. The brain facts, or more
broadly, the nervously mediated facts, are the social facts, and no
emphasis placed on brain as such helps materially to the analysis
of the facts from the social view-point.
I have indicated (chap, i, sec. i,) the nature of the difficulties,
almost unsurmountable, which one must face in any attempt to
isolate brain capacity by itself either in individuals or in races as
apart from achievement as social fact. The case of the idiot is
clear, and so the case of the dog when the special activities of
human society arc under study; but even when one takes as low
a people as the Bushmen, it is not at all clear how the analysis
may be made; and when, to note merely one abuse, an anatomist
attempts to portray the fates of the negro on the basis of a study
of 103 negro brains, the procedure becomes ludicrous.
I am not denying that there may be actual differences in nervous
complexity (and so capacity) between physical races of men just
as there may be between individuals. I am not denying the signi-
ficance of the skulls of Pithecanthropus and of the Neanderthal
man. The whole point concerns the interpretation of social activity
and organization in terms of such differences. Against the exag-
gerated emphasis that is placed on slight shadings of capacity
stated in anatomical or physiological terms, I am appealing to a
whole world of social facts, and asking their analysis on their own
merits.
Perhaps the point will become clearer by considering for a
25©
PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
moment animal societies. Everyone knows of the complex social
organization of the hive bees and of social ants. Everyone knows
also that these animals have but mcagerly developed nervous
systems. It is true lliat a clearly defmed physiological differentia-
tion of the individuals into two or more classes is a very important
characteristic of their societies. But over and above this phase
there is a vast deal of social life in the hive and in the anthill in
just our own sense. So significant is the functioning social equili-
brium in bee societies that one writer, M. A. Lane, in his Level of
Social Molion, has felt able to use it as a guide in estimating the
tendencies of human social equilibration. Or consider the beavers.
They are mammals by no means high in brain development. Yet
they have societies organized on the compound system of both
social group life and intra-social family life. It was not "brain"
that created the bee societies and the beaver societies, and it is
not "brain" that keeps them functioning in their complex pro-
cesses. Their social activities are mediated by nervous process,
of course, but one cannot even by the aid of a most desperate pre-
judice succeed in correlating the degree of social organization
with the degree of nervous differentiation, whether one compares
these animals with other closely related animals, or these animal
societies with human societies. Such intelligent animals as ele-
phants and monkeys have very rudimentary social forms. Human
societies show all degrees of complexity, many of them far below,
and from one point of view all of them below, the bee society. What
can one make of it ?
It must be remembered that animals even without any nervous
differentiation at all show all the typical reactions of animals wath
nervous systems, as is proved by Jennings in his work on the
Behavior of the Lower Organisms. From the bottom of the scale
to the top we have a qualitatively uniform "activity" for our
material. With the differentiation of the nervous structure there
is an increasing complexity and completeness of the reflection in
each specialized activity, of the surrounding world (that is, of
surrounding activity). This greater complexity of reflection, or
representation, is unquestionably of the very highest importance.
INDIVIDUAL ENDOWMENT AND RACE TYPE 251
But here is the rub. If it is so exceedingly hard to find any way
to correlate this nervous differentiation and complexity with social
differentiation and complexity in the long scale of vital evolution,
how are we justified in dogmatically placing an assumed correlation
of this kind at the basis of our interpretations of society, where
the differentiations on the physiological side are in comparison
infinitesimal, and where the social differentiations are so strikingly
great ? Certainly a dogmatic correlation of this kind is not justi-
fied. Just as certainly a dogmatic assertion that there is no such
correlation would not be justified. Any full and careful proof of
any such correlation will be welcomed, for just what it is worth,
and just to the extent that it is carried. But the presumption is in
favor of an interpretation in social terms directly — in terms, that is,
of masses of men; and the probabilities are that interpretation in
terms of nervous differentiation will serve merely as a control on
the other interpretation at special points, not as something that
can replace it.
Recalling the argument of chap, v, I can restate this as follows :
It is not "brain power" as such which we find, but "brain at work;"
it is "brain at work socially;" in this " brain-at- work-socially"
material the abstracted "brain-power" phase is of minor impor-
tance, so far as giving us light on the material goes; it is not the
ll brains which set the social tasks, but rather the tasks socially set
I ' which busy the brains.
Suppose now someone should attempt to interpret an increase
of brain power, stated as such, in terms of natural selection. In
this decade, of course, the inheritance of acquired characters is
not to be mentioned. Whether the variation from which this
interpretation started was regarded as fortuitous or not, it would
remain true that the only kind of variation of nervous structure
that could be selected would be one that functioned better than
others in the given social life at the time of its appearance. It
would have to win in the struggle also as against many other
physical conditions of survival, such as insensibility to pain, mus-
cular strength, resistance to disease, and so forth. We should
have an infinitely rich field of social phenomena set over against
252 TIIK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
niirnilr l^rain power variations, which themselves would require
statement in social forms in order to make it possible to study them.
We have therefore a fme field for study on the social side, but a
very defi'ctive field on the individual side. Should such an inter-
pretation of inc reusing brain power be given, we should not be
much better olT because of it, since all depends on how that i)ower
is used, on what work it does; and this we must continue to get
on the social side, and nowhere else. The case is the same what-
ever variation of the brain-power theory we are considering;
whether it be a (jueslion of higher average nervous capacity, or
of the more frequent appearance of men of exceptional capacity,
or finally of top points of capacity appearing which w^ere never
reached before.
Race endowment or race type is another manner of speech by
which coherency is given to the social facts, but it will be very easy
to show that it is actually ''up in the air" to a very much greater
extent than are the groups I have been using, even at first appear-
ance. In his Races 0} Europe, Ripley tells us that "race denotes
what man is ; all these other details of social life denote what man
docs." Then he proceeds to describe the three physical races in
which " the shape of the human head is one of the best available
tests known," and in which all other tests are like unto it; and he
proceeds to demolish the ^■arious attempts to prove that the varia-
tions of social life depend upon these race variations. I think I
hardly need to argue that all the things that man does give us just
as good a knowledge of wdiat he "is" as the shape of his skull
gives us. The physical races are admitted. The work of x\mmon
and his followers has been admirable on the side of physical meas-
urements, but "Ammon's law"^ in all its forms is merely a hypoth-
esis at long range, and not even a plausible hypothesis. It is so
far from being proved that it needs no further attention here.
Race type as we commonly meet it is a very different thing.
It is stated almost* exclusively in psychical terms. It is a seductively
bright-hued clothing of endowment, conceived of as the property
» See especially Revue internationale de sociologie, Vol. VI, p. 173.
INDIVIDUAL ENDOW^IENT AND RACE T\TE 253
of all the individuals of the race. It makes interesting reading
and is not hard to write when one gets the trick. It does not require
any of the close, hard, careful study that other methods of inter-
preting society require. The plain citizen on his travels wTites
home a good bit about race type. The statesman on a vacation
is interested in it, much more than he is when he is at work. The
fiction-writer on a lecture tour takes his turn at it. The pompous
quack of sociology is sure to find in it materials suited to his needs.
And occasionally a hard student of social facts nibbles in its green
fields, finds the freshness and flavor a relief from his troubles, and
is seduced into wasting himself in the vain attempt to make definite
and calculable that which by its very nature is the foe to defiinite-
ness, the glorification of illusion, the veil over the real world.
The English are thriftless, the French thrifty, the Germans
are phlegmatic, the Spaniards volatile, the Corsicans vindictive,
the ancient Hebrews religious, the Greeks artistic, the Romans
legal minded, the Red Indians cruel, the East Indians lost in the
mists of speculation, the native Australians theatrical, this people
individualistic, that communistic — it does not make much difference
what you call them or how you combine the adjectives, except
that the nearer home you come the more cautious you are for greater
danger of being laughed at. One would think that the Jews never
waxed fat and wicked, that Greeks never went forth to trade nor
had a religion worth mentioning, and that the Romans had pure
law without any content of social activity at all.
When once one has built up a race type in this way out of such
materials he can use it to suit his purposes. By proper admi.xture
of elements he can make the race type a plausible explanation of
whatever is. Yet all that he gets is verbosity.
The trouble with race type in such uses is that it reflects not
the life of the people supposed to be described, but something of
the historical value they have, or have had, for us. Such race type
is a mere extension of psychological terms from their use in the
practical distinction of man from man to an application to whole
peoples where they have no practical purpose. The terms are
carried upward, losing their merit for ordinary everyday purposes,
254 l"i; PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
and keeping all the misconceptions that go with them. They do
not distinguish race from race at all.
Till- way to finfl out how a thing works is to take it to pieces and
examine the parts, not to sit down and draw clever pen pictures
of it. Just what are the parts, just how are they brought into one
system, what is the functioning of one with reference to the other;
such are the questions that must be answered.
It is true that all distinctions of race type are not so bad as this.
There are many degrees of naiveness among them. Von Jhering,
for examj)le, in his work on the Aryan, laughs out of court many of
the worst varieties of race character, such as the alleged "love of
wandering" which made the Germanic ancestors go a-roaming.
He seeks always to reduce such innate, inborn characters peculiar
to a people, to characters which they have acquired through the
conditions in which they have lived, and which any other people
under similar conditions would similarly have acquired. But
he nevertheless retains many of these race propensities, not merely
as actual activity, but as psychically stated characteristics, as, for
example, when he discusses the non-gambling character of the Sem-
ites, which, in contrast with the Aryan love of gambling, has per-
sisted through the ages. Here the statement in terms of activity
is good just as far as it applies, but the statement in psychic terms
which pretends to be something superior to activity is just as bad
as the "Wanderlust" itself.
We will be able to test results which are as good as any that can
be reached by the use of mental type in race if we examine Professor
Dewey's article, which has proved stimulating to many writers, on
the "Interpretation of Savage Mind," in the Psychological Review
(May, 1902). With his functional psychology Dew'ey should be
little apt to fall into the crude errors of the use of mind states as
causes.
Like Arthur Bauer and Demolins, Dewey lays great stress on
"occupations." He sets forth that mind has "a pattern, a scheme
of arrangements in its constituent elements," and that "so funda-
mental is the group of occupational activities that it affords the
scheme or pattern of the structural organization of mental traits."
INDIVIDUAL ENDOWMENT AND RACE TYPE 255
Taking the Australian natives, who are hunters, he tries to show
how in a hunting community "the mental pattern developed is
carried over into various activities, customs, and products, which
on their face have nothing to do with the hunting life;" he looks
forward to getting an "important method for the interpretation
of social institutions and cultural resources — a psychological
method for sociology."
Illustrating with his Australians, he strives to show that their
art, the corroboree, is just of the character one could expect among
hunters who, unlike agriculturists, have always the direct satis-
faction, the food itself, in immediate view. So with their religion
with its ever-insistent animism; so with their war games, and so
also with their marriage institutions. Now while Professor Dewey
gives us comparatively plausible interpretations in the first three
cases (though even here there is trouble because the "hunting
pattern" is not so clear, so definite, so firm a point of support as
he makes it out to be), when he comes to marriage he is not plaus-
ible at all. Australian exogamy is much too complicated to discuss
here, and much too complicated for anyone to discuss in a few
sentences of comparison with hunting activities. Professor Dewey
thinks the natives get just that dramatic excitement out of it which
comports well with hunting life. But when one thinks of the exceed-
ing complexity of the system and the rigid discipline and self-
control it involves, not merely in tense moments, but steadily
every day, one might just as well compare it with the "mental type "
of the agriculturist. However, that is neither here nor there.
The point is that the "mental type" is here nothing but a con-
venient phrase to cover certain similarities of activity which the
investigator observes, or thinks he observes, and that it does not
stand for any factor in the proceedings. All these interpretations,
so far as they have value, might just as well be made in terms of
activity direct. What one needs to do in order to interpret is not to
depict a mental pattern or type, but to take the activities, to analyze
them as they come, to break them down into group relations, to
compare them when thus broken down with similar sets of group
relations among other peoples, and thereby strive in the usual
256 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
mjuincT of investigation to get a more adequate statement of each
of the two sets of groups that are compared. When that is done
one will have tyjx's of activity, and not interjected mind types.
Professor Dewey's article makes a distinct advance over ordinary
methods of treating the savage, by looking at him much more
nearly from his own center of activity (I do not say " point of view,"
because that would imjjly the savage's own statement of himself,
which is not in point here). All it needs is to keep the psychic
process but drop the concreted mental type.
What then are we to understand by race ? Fu-st, we have the
physical or, much better, the anatomical race. But all attempts
to identify the characteristics of this in detail with social race
activities have been painful failures. Then we have the social
race facts, the peoples and sets of peoples as they actually exist
and act. In each people we have an elaborately built-up group
formation, and in each set of peoples we have a type of group for-
mation which can, for certain purposes and to a certain extent, be
contrasted with the type in another set of peoples. These race
facts are very real, positively existing, social facts. You cannot
change a group complex or type by breathing on it, or poking a
finger at it, or praying to it, or "educating" it. Each has built
itself up under conditions — which are mainly to be found in its
own masses in their given locations — and, given a change in the
conditions, there will be a definite enough change in the facts.
In interpreting government we have to do with given kinds of
activity among given peoples : in such cases race simply is a name
that indicates roughly the complexes of groups. We have also
to do with race facts inside governments, where two "races" are
both under one rule, or where they come into contact in neighboring
governments. In these cases it is usually necessary to split the
race facts down mto group facts which can much better be described
under a ditTerent terminology. Discussion — public opinion — will
usually be carried on in terms of race, but the underlying groups
which the opinion represents usually need a very different state-
ment. Sometimes when color of skin distinguishes such "races,"
the race division strikes deeper, and we have something akin to
INDIVIDUAL ENDOWMENT AND RACE TYPE 257
what in later chapters I shall call " classes," that is solidified groups,
firmly set with many cohering interest lines on one plane. They
are comparable also with castes. But in these cases as in all others
we are dealing with interest groups, in the terminology I have
already established. Maeterlinck has an essay on "The Latin
and the Teuton Races," which may profitably be read by anyoi e
who thinks the race distinctions are more fundamental than I
make them. As an artist he paints a picture of the contrasts
between Flemings and Walloons, but he judges his own picture
to be superficial, and finally says that "it seems very positive that
the Fleming and the Walloon arc of exactly the same value."
What I have said of races I might say also of psychic "charac-
ter" classes, if it were worth the trouble to elaborate. But I will
leave that as a corollary. It applies to Patten's dingers, sensualists,
stalwarts, and mugwumps; Giddings' forceful, convivial, austere,
and rationally conscientious; Ratzenhofer's interjected set of
fearfully and wonderfully made " Individualitat " and " Interesse "
classes: Bauer's classes, so far as they are distinguished on this
side (he, however, mixes many pouits of view in his tables);
Novicow's ^lite; Lecky's reactionaries, conservatives, liberals,
and radicals; Fouillee's "sensitifs," "intellectuels," and "volon-
taircs," and many others. Such efforts merely restate the social
facts "psychically," but get nowhere.
CHAPTER X
GOVERNMENT
T have Sft forth our raw materials as consisting entirely of the
ty\ group activities of men; activities that always embody an interest,
i\^ that never define themselves except in terms of other group activi-
\ 1 ties of the existing society, that in many cases are difTerentiated in
* such a way that they become representative of other group activi-
ties; and I have made a preliminary examination of leadership and
public o])inion, important elements of the governing process, to
show that they are themselves only to be understood as such repre-
sentative group activities. By these steps the way has been pre-
' pared to take up systematically the phenomena of government and
study them in group terms.
The phenomena of government are from start to finish phenom-
ena of force. But force is an objectionable word. In the j&rst
place, it is apt here, as in the natural sciences, to lead its users into
metaphysical quagmires. In the second place, it is too closely
identified with so-called "physical force," and too apt to be under-
stood as in opposition to non-force factors of a sympathetic or
moral or ideal nature; and this even while these latter factors
are actually being treated as themselves very powerful agents in
social process.
I prefer to use the word pressure insle ad of force, since it keeps
the attention closely directed upon the groups themselves, instead
of upon any mystical "realities" assumed to be underneath and
supporting them; and since its connotation is not limited to the
narrowly "physical." We frequently talk of "bringing pressure
to bear" upon someone, and we can use the word here with but
slight extension beyond this common meaning.
Pressure, as we shall use it, is always a group phenomenon.
It indicates the push and resistance between groups. The balance
258 ^
GOVERNMENT /^ 259
of the group pressures is the existing state of society. Pressure is '
broad enough to include all forms of the group influence upon
group, from battle and riot to abstract reasoning and sensitive
morality. It takes up into itself "moral energy" and the finest
discriminations of conscience as easily as bloodthirsty lust of power.
It allows for humanitarian movements as easily as for political
corruption. Groups exert their pressure, whether they find expres-
sion through representative opinion groups or whether they are
silent, not indeed with the same techmque, not with the same pal-
pable results, but in just as real a way. The tendencies to activity
are pressures as well as the more visible activities.
Political phenomena have no peculiar technique of pressure
not possessed by other, social phenomena; that is, no technique
qualitatively or fundamentally all their own. They have, of course,
specialties of organization which are themselves teclinique ; but
these, from the present point of view — pressure itself — are merely
a special forming or working-up of the common material. The
technique varies greatly from age to age, and sometimes even from
day to day, in accordance with the character of the interest groups
that are involved; and indeed political progress is often sketched
by writers about it in terms of the development of technique from
some abhorred form toward some idealized form. But murder
may break through at almost any time as one technical process,
even in our biggest and most pretentious governments — as, in the
United States, now in Colorado, now in Alabama — while again
results may seem to be achieved through a pure " love of mankind."
Of course, what is process from one point of view is content from
another, as when political murders and lynchings are taken in hand
and suppressed, but that is a double-sided characteristic of all
the phenomena with which we shall have to deal — merely a difi'er-
ence in group activity on different planes of grouping.
The term political phenomena does not square exactly with |
the term government. From one point of view the former is the
broader, as when we talk of certain party or subparty activities
as political, but hesitate to include them under government proper.
26o Till'; PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
From iinollur jjoinl of view, however, government is much the
broader term; this is where political is limited in its meaning to
activities having to do with the organized government, and govern-
ment is given a still wider meaning. 1 wish next to describe three
senses in which the word government may be used, not because
our study has to do equally with all of them, but because they indi-
cate dilTerent ranges, or types, of the pressure process between
groups ; because simUar specific contents of activity may be handled
in all of them and make clear transitions from one to the others;
and l)ecause we cannot get an adequate understanrling of the par-
ticular facts we shall have before us, without taking a glance at
them in their broader setting. I shall call these three senses of
the word government simply the broadest, the narrow^est, and
the intermediate.
In the broadest sense — a very broad sense indeed-j^government
is the process of the adjustment of a set of interest groups in a
particular distinguishable group or system without any differen-
tiated activity, or "organ," to center attention on just what is
happeningT]^ We must recognize that there is such a thing as
genuine government in this very broad sense, because societies
showing adjusted interest groups without a differentiated "govern-
ment " are actually found in corners of the earth — their govern-
ment is called "anarchy" by political scientists who find it in
primitive communities; because an immense mass of such adjust-
ments not mediated by the government organs underlies the work
of the differentiated government in our familiar societies — this is
the habit background already discussed; and because interest
groups, identical with those that are adjusting themselves or that
have become fully adjusted in the ways just described, work through
the differentiated government, and give that government its char-
acteristic forms and movements, whether that government be
despotic or "pure democracy;" or, in other words, whether it is
as near to what somebody thinks would be abstract despotism or
pure democracy as can be found. I shall return to this sense of
government, to illustrate it, in a moment.
In the narrowest sense— except for the British technical use
GOVERNMENT 261
of "the Government "^-government is a differentiated, representa-
tive group, or set of groups (organ, or set of organs), performing
specified governing functions for the underlying groups of the popu-
lation. I I may well say now, and be done with it, that "organ" is
merely an inept word to indicate a peculiar kind of representative
group, and that if I occasionally lapse into using it, the word has
no other meaning than that. Government in this sense is not a
certain number of people, but a certain network oLactivities. The
most absolute monarch that ever ruled does not himself under
exact analysis enter as a physical man entirely into the government ;
he always takes part in many activities that are not governmental.
Nor is he ever under exact analysis all by himself the whole of the
government: he always is a part of it, a most spectacular part, of
course, but still a part. And so with other official personages,
no matter what the type of government. It is always their special-
ized activity that is the government itself in the present
sense.
Now between the broadest and the narrowest sense of the word
government there lies an intermediate sense to which we must
attend. We get to it when we have clearly passed beyond the
limits of the differentiated governing activities, but are still among
phenomena that are specialized with reference to the government,
or, let us say, among political phenomena. A particular form of
political party may or may not be regarded as part of the govern-
ment in the narrowest sense, but even when it is not it is decidedly
a phenomenon of government, that is, of the governing process.
And behind that are organized movements of a pohtical nature,
or tending toward political activity. We cannot shut them out.
The directors of a corporation may finish their ordinary business
and turn at the same meeting to discuss the part the corporation
will take in the next political campaign. Their activity, which
a moment before was industrial or economic, then becomes at once
political — a part of the governing process of the country — and is
to be studied specifically as such. Moreover, the corporation as
activity will be represented through its members, along with other
corporations, in various organizations, which operate in the political
262 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
fuM; iind llu- activity of all these organizations is part of govern-
ment in the intermediate sense.
I might, indeed, add a fourth sense to this list to cover cases in
which dilTerentialed governing activities are found in organiza-
tions of men which arc not of the kind we call political. Such, for
example, would be the government, or administration, of a large
corporation. Such government is, however, to be assimilated in
tyjx' to that of government in the narrowest sense, above; the dis-
tinction concerning rather the field, or content, of the activities
with which it has to do. I shall be interested in it here only so far
as it furnishes illustrations presently to show that political govern-
ment is not unique in its methods and technique. As it does not
come within the direct range of our studies, it would only bring
confusion into the distinctions above to arrange them so as to allow
specifically for it.
It would be very difficult indeed to draw a precise line to mark
where the activity that is economic ends and the activity that is
political begins. It would be just as hard to draw a precise line
between the activities that are part of government in the inter-
mediate sense and those that are part of government in the narrow^-
est sense. Fortunately no such lines need to be drawn in our study.
Our failure to do it at the start need not handicap us any more
than the biologist's failure to draw a precise line between vegetable
and animal life handicaps him. Fine-spun theories will not help
us. Quite the contrary. We must wait for gradually increasing
knowledge of facts to enlighten us. We have the economic and
other underlying groups, we have their given adjustments, we have
their political tendencies, we have their representation through
various organizations and opinions ranging up to the political
party, with technique ranging from violence and corruption to
"statesmanship," we have their representation in the differentiated
political activities, in the executive, the legislature, and the courts.
For the present we see three general senses in which the word
^yernment is used, and for the present that must content us.
Y}i is natural, I think, to call the differentiated government "the
government," or the "governing body," and to embrace the inter-
GOVERNMENT 26
0
^
mediate range of activities in the term "government," without the
article, or in the phrase, "the process of government," or under
"political phenomena." J The very widest meaning of government
will rarely recur in this work, after we have done with some illus-
trations a few pages farther on. Without any attempt at exact
definition, I shall aim to indicate in all doubtful cases the exact
sense I have in mind by qualifying adjectives, even at the risk of
cumbersome phrasing.
)^
If now I had any occasion to use the word " state " in this work, ^'•
I think that word could probably be well defined as the sum of the ^ ,v
activities comprised within the intermediate sense of the word . I f;^""
government. All those activities which together make up the ^
whole process would correspond fairly well to "the politically
organized society." But the only advantage in this would be that
we should be holding these activities under a logical classification
apart from those that fall under government in the possible
fourth sense above, and the evil involved therein would be at
least as large in amount as the good. The "state" itself is, to the /
best of my knowledge and belief, no factor in our investigation.^ J
It is like the "social whole": we are not interested in it as such,
but exclusively in the processes within it. The "idea of the state"
has been very prominent, no doubt, among the intellectual amuse-
ments of the past, and at particular places and times it has served
to help give coherent and pretentious expression to some particular
group's activity. But in either case it is too minute a factor to
deserve space in a work covering as broad a range as this. Nor
need the state, as "the tyranny of the minority over the majority,"
concern us. We are not conducting a propaganda.. Of course
' If an effort were being made here to restate theoretical political science it
might be a serious question how far the exclusion of the term "state" would be
justified. Since the object is a very different one — namely, to illustrate the pos-
sibilities of the application of a particular manner of statement or scientific method
to the material — I am convinced that the gain is vastly more than enough to
offset the passing inconvenience to persons accustomed to starting their trains of
thought from the word "state" as they define it. From such persons I ask only
the recognition that I am adapting my verbal tools in what I conceive to be the
best manner to the task immediately in hand.
A-
264 Jin: I'ROCESS of government
an American stale, such as Massachusetts or Louisiana, must be
mentioned at times, but in this special sense the word needs no
definition.
1 may add here that "sovereignty" is of no more interest to
I us than the state. Sovereignty has its very important place in
arguments in defense of an existing government, or in verbal assaults
on a government in the name of the populace or of some other pre-
tender, or in fine-spun legal expositions of what is about to be done.
But as soon as it gets out of the pages of the lawbook or the political
pamphlet, it is a piteous, threadbare joke. So long as there is
plenty of firm earth under foot there is no advantage in trying to
sail the clouds in a cartoonist's airship.
As for a very common mode of expression, which puts the state
and the phenomena of government in general in a class aU by
themselves with sanctions peculiar and distinct from those of other
forms of social organization, it is perhaps needless to add that we
shall have no use for it here. The state as " compulsory " or " invol-
untary" organization maybe distinguished from minor groupings
as "voluntary": to the one maybe attributed power to punish,
which is denied the other. But this can be done solely from a
limited view-point. Voluntary and involuntary are artificial
distinctions. The penalties the state inflicts are simply special
forms of a great class of penalties imposed by all social organiza-
tions. Similarly, the state and the minor groupings need to be
assimilated to one another, rather than sharply contrasted. Indeed
a kindergarten acquaintance with the facts of government, as
apart from the halos, the hero-worship, and other sensa-
tionalism, should suffice to put an end to any such approach
to the subject.
Let me next discuss a few illustrations of government considered
as the adjustment or balance of interests. All of these illustrations
are of phenomena which are apt at any time to be regulated through
"the government," but I want to ignore for the moment that phase
of the matter and show how as institutions they themselves embody
a balancing of interests, and, in some of the cases, how they have
GOVERNMENT 265
differentiated governing organs, which are all of a piece so far as
process goes with the process of "the government."
Take the marriage institution. Just as we find it in society,
lying sometimes apart from, and sometimes in part mediated •
through, "the government," it is itself a phenomenon of the adjust-
ment of interests, and not of interests that may adequately be
described as "individual," but of social group interests. I am
not talking about anything that goes on inside the family, taken as a
society for itself : I do not mean, that is, that the husband governs
the wife, or that either husband or wife or both govern the children,
but I am thinking of the marriage grouping as embedded in society.
In human society at all stages — and to a certain extent among
many mammals, whatever may be the truth about the pairing that
is so frequent and permanent in the unpenetrated world of the
birds — marriage is an arrangement of social order, a balancing of
conflicting interests, a forming and shaping of these interests along
lines which eliminate certain disturbances and violent struggles
and soften down others, a substitution of a new technique for the
adjustment of interests in place of an older technique become
objectionable to dominant elements of society. And it is an
adjustment of interests which can never be comprehensively stated
in terms of individual men and women or by any process of adding
A to 5, to C, and to D, as individual persons, but which, instead,
requires the recognition of group interests for its statement even in
its simplest manifestation.
At the bottom, of course, there is sex; that is to say, all the
individuals have sexual activity. Moreover they are discriminat-
ingly, not blindly, sexual; this is about what the disproof of the
theory of primitive promiscuity amounts to. By discriminating I
imply nothing more than the choosing or pairing fact, which is
open to direct observation in the acts of members of low societies ;
it is not necessary to go behind it as a given fact. The discrimi-
nations of the individual members of the society conflict with each
other, and there is settlement of the discriminations in various
simple ways. There is a governing process in the widest sense, a
process of balancing interests, going on already. Then according
266 TIIK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
as tlic little society is composed of more or fewer members; accord-
ing as it is settled in a village from which its members move to
but short distances, or as it is migratory; according to the relative
j)ernianencc or changeablencss of the individuals in the little
society; according to the manners of getting a living— all of them
factors of group arrangement within the society — these sexual
discriminations and adjustments of discriminations from being
process become content to large i)arts of the membership of the
group. That is, certain phases of what is going on which are
regarded as incidental by the primary actors become most impor-
tant phases to the larger group of bystanders. And the bystanders
begin to interpose. It is entirely indifferent for present purposes
whether one talks of custom or of conscious choice. In the forest,
two bucks fight it out, but no deer group forms with interests to
intervene. But in the crowded village community, two youths
get into a feud; they disturb their elders' peace, they may draw
their elders into the feud against the elders' will, they may keep the
village awake all night, they may wreck the fishing boat, bungle
the hunt, or bring defeat in tribal war by mischance of their quarrel.
A grouj) shuts off some part of their technical procedure, and we
have a marriage institution on the spot. The old women around
the fire in the Iroquois village dispose of sons' and daughters'
hands, and thereby keep the peace. The household community
sometimes comes to require marriages outside of it, and w-e may
have one form of the clan. The adult men and the newly initiated
youths may organize against each other and we have a trace of the
class division inside the clans. We may have sex group against sex
group, trade against trade, or rank against rank. There is no
philosopher's stone to assure us of the outcome. What we observe
we observe, and that is all there is to it, except as we compare and
analyze it. Once given an organization of the interests, held in
position by effective groups, and with no clashes with changing
group interests, then that organization may persist indefinitely.
There is no reason why it should not be continued — which is just
another way of saying that there is no interest group in action
powerful enough to alter it.
GOVERNMENT 267
Or let us jump to modern society, passing over intermediate
marriage forms. Is mobility of individuals increasing? Are
income conditions changing ? Are important new group relations
forming among women, or including women ? Are nuisances and
dangers growing out of disjointed families ? Then there will be a
shoving aside of the old ordering of the interests, and an establish-
ing of a new ordering, with groups of all grades of depth, of all
degrees of representativeness, functioning away in a great whirl.
There will be a busy talk group whirling around high up, with
much to set forth about social crimes and the rights of women and
men; and another talk group denouncing the first talk group as
though social order depended on it. They arc highly superficial —
significant, but incidental except as process. Order is bound to
result, because order is now and order has been, where order is
needed, though all the prophets be confounded.
I do not for an instant want it thought that I am attempting to
interpret marriage. That is a task that even for a single attempt, in
a single stage of the institution, would involve some thousands of
times the labor I am giving it here. I only want to indicate how
the interest groups are fundamental in the institution, and how the
ordering of the groups is a type of government in the widest sense.
For another illustration, let us take the church. The medi-
aeval church was a differentiated government alongside of political
governments. The modern church daily complains that as a
differentiated government it has been or is being discarded, which
is equivalent to saying cither that the interests which it formerly
regulated have transformed themselves until they are outside its
structure, or that they are now being regulated through some other
differentiated government, or that they are now balanced in such
a way that they do not need the differentiated organ to do any
adjusting for them. All of which possibilities may in greater or
less degree be true — that is a question of fact. But whatever the
interests may be or have been, or whether they are stated in natural
or supernatural terms, which is from the present point of view a
question of detail, the church and organized religion are phenomena
of government in the widest sense from start to finish, and some-
268 I 111; I'ROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
times of govirnmcnl in u (liffcrcntialcd form akin to "the govern-
ment," the state.
A c()rj)or:iti()n is government through and through. It is itself
a balancing of interests, even though it presents itself in many of
its activities as a unit. It has been forced into corporate form by
the struggling of the interests upon one another, by the struggling
of wider groui)s with the intra-corporation groups. It functions
in the political government, and at the same time it has its own
interests functioning in it, with a differentiated government evolved
from their adjustment. Possibly there are as many forms of cor-
porate government as there are of political government, and possibly
{those corporate government forms can ultimately be classified on
'the very lines used for the classification of political governments.
I do not know that they can be, I only suggest it. Certain technical
methods which political government uses, as, for instance, hanging,
are not used by corporations, generally speaking, but that is a
detail. Corporation activities often put people to death by care-
lessness or by parsimony : this is not a judgment upon the corpor-
ations, but merely a statement of fact. The difference in technical
methods, the fact that political government controls corporations,
even the fact that corporations sometimes control political govern-
ment, does not suffice to throw their processes out of the range
which must be included in the same word that is used to cover the
phenomena of political government.
Or consider a labor union. We can find everything of govern-
ment within it: locality interests, rank interests, strict economic
interests, autocracy, revolution, boss rule, representative institu-
tions, the referendum, judicial processes, punishments, terrorism,
corruption, self-sacrifice, loyalty, and a thousand other things, aU
capable of statement in terms of the balancing of group interests
of the same kind that goes on in political government.
I do not intend to discuss in the remaining chapters either the
balance of interests without a differentiated governing agency, or
the governing agencies that appear in organizations outside the
political field. I shall confine myself to political government (in
GOVERNMENT 269
the narrowest sense), and to the related processes by the aid of
which the underlying groups of the population make themselves
effective through the government (government in the intermediate
sense).
All phenomena of government arc phenomena of groups pressing
one another, forming one another, and pushing out_ new groups
and group representatives (the organs or agencies of government)
tojmcdiatejh^axljustments. It is only as we isolate these group
activities, determine their representative values, and get the whole
process stated in terms of them, that we approach to a satisfactory
knowledge of government.
Let me give two or three illustrations, chosen from primitive
societies, so as to avoid dragging in the conflicts of our own times,
which show the kinds of interests that function through govern-
ment. An Arab sheik at the head of several tribes has as one of
his most important duties the ordering and assigning of pasturing
districts ; he is the agency through which this adjustment is made.
In the Code of Manu we read of rajahs fixing every five days the
price of merchandise; here we have a people different in its
industrial life, and consequently with different group interests to
adjust through government. It may be said that the rajah's
exactions made his services come high, but that is a question to
decide not from our point of view, but from the very group tensions
as they existed there and then. In China under the Chow Dynasty
almost all the officials were occupied with agriculture. Again the
group interests were dominant; it was a society with no idle land,
with no land speculation, and with no "single-tax" issue in any
form. Among the Australian natives elaborate rules for the
division of food exist, forming an important section of the "law,"
mediated in part through the government, and in part lying out-
side in the realm of government in the broadest sense. The
Spartan ephors once reprimanded a Spartan because he was grow-
ing fat, and threatened him with banishment. It does not matter
that we may perhaps think today that such a regulation is " ridicu-
lous;" it had a very real meaning in terms of group interests at
the time. Tacitus tells us that the Suiones had a strong ruler wlio
2 70 'JIFK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
look their arms away and locked Ihcm up under a guard ("arma
. . . . clausa sub custode"): the ocean protected them from
invasions and they were very prosperous. It is easy to see what
group interests worked through that strong ruler and gave him his
strength to do what he did. I cannot refrain from adding just one
illustration— though out of place here — to show how a similar
mediating function is found in those representative activities we
commonly describe under the name of ideas. Consider the wor-
ship of Adonis or Osiris, gods of vegetation, as set forth by Frazer.
The gods, stated as such, did not make the crops grow; but the wor-
shiping activity kept the population keen to its agricultural duties,
and was therefore functionally the representative of agricultural
activity. It helped to keep the bulk of the people in community
life from suffering from the bad habits of the sluggard and frivolous
elements of the population, and helped to keep the system working to
the support of the priest and warrior castes where those w^re found.
When we take such an agency of government as a despotic ruler,
we cannot possibly advance to an understanding of him except in
terms of the group activities of his society which are most directly
represented through him, along with those which almost seem not
to be represented through him at all, or to be represented to a
different degree or in a different manner. And it is the same w'ith
democracies, even in their "purest" and simplest forms, as well
as in their most complicated forms. We cannot fairly talk of
despotisms or of democracies as though they were absolutely
distinct types of government to be contrasted offhand with each
other or with other types. All depends for each despotism and
each democracy and each other form of government on the given
interests, their relations, and their methods of interaction. The
interest groups create the government and work through it; the
government, as activity, works "for" the groups; the government,
from the view- point of certain of the groups may at times be their
private tool; the government, from the view-point of others of
the groups, seems at times their deadly enemy; but the process
is all one, and the joint participation is always present, however
it may be phrased in public opinion or clamor.
GOVERNMENT 271
It is convenient most of the time in studying government to
talk of these groups as interests. But I have abeacly indicated
with sufficient clearness that the interest is nothing other than the
group activity itself. The words by which we name the interests_^
often give the best expressionjo^the value of the group activities in'
terms of other group activitie^: if I may be permitted that form /
oiTpKrasing, thl-y are more qualitative^ than^uantitative in their /
implications. But that is sometimes a great evil as well as some-
times an advantage. We must always remember that there is
nothing in the interests purely because of themselves and that we
can depend on them only as they stand for groups which are acting,
or tending toward activity^ or pressing^ themselves along in their
activity with other groups.
When we get the group activities on the lower planes worked
out and show them as represented in various forms of higher groups,
culminating in the political groups, then we make progress in our
interpretations. Always and everywhere our study must be a
study of the interests that work through government; otherwise
we have not got down to facts. Nor will it suflice to take a single
interest group and base our interpretation upon it, not even for
a special time and a special place. No interest group has meaning
except with reference to other interest groups ; and^ those other
interest groups are pressures; they count in the government_pro-
cess. The lowest of despised castes, deprived of rights to the pro-
tection of property and even life, will still be found to be a factor
in the government, if only we can sweep the whole field, and
measure the caste in its true degree of power, direct or represented,
in its potentiality of harm to the higher castes, and in its identi-
fication with them for some important purposes, however deeply^
hidden from ordinary view. No slaves, not the worst abused of
all, but help to form the government. They are an interest group
within it.
CHAPTER XI
LAW
Law matches government every inch of its course. The two
are not different things but the same thing. We cannot call law
a resultant of government. Rather we must say it is government —
that same phenomenon — only, stated from a different angle.
When we talk about government we put emphasis on the influ-
ence, the pressure, that is being exerted by group upon group.
Wlien we talk about law we think not of the influencing or pressure
as process, but of the status of the activities, the pressures being
assumed to have worked themselves through to a conclusion or
balance. Of course, the pressures never do as a matter of fact
work themselves through to a final balance, and law, stated as a
completed balance, is therefore highly abstract. Law is activity,
just as government is. It is a group process, just as government is.
It is a forming, a systematization, a struggle, an adaptation, of
group interests, just as government is.
There is nothing mysterious about law ; but the task of unravel-
ing its group intricacies without indulging in an appeal to
mysteries is as difficult as any task we have to face. One
trouble with the analysis lies in the many kinds of facts the word
law indicates, in the many meanings it has, even when no attention
is paid to any meanings other than those found in connection with
the plienomena of government. We are better off, however, in
English with our w'ord law than we should be in other languages
with their distinctions between " jus " and " lex," between " Recht "
and "Gesetz," between "droit" and "loi." "Jus" and "Recht"
and "droit" have been the "open sesame" to the door that leads
to the world of mysteries. We have the words right and justice,
but we ha\e not abused them so badly. We may be thankful that
we have escaped the double terminology.
It is with law just as it is with government. If, in studying
272
LAW 273
it, we at any time desert the observable activities of our social
groups we shall be off on a tangent with any destination possible.
There are a myriad fine-spun legal theories to every fine-spun
political theory. Sovereignty is, indeed, but one legal theory
grown luxuriant. However, the legal theories dance along the
path of the legal process in a way for which the political theories
find comparatively little opportunity. We cannot set the legal
theories aside as insignificant, as was possible with the theory of
sovereignty. We must keep the legal theories inside our inter-
pretation, as having a continuously important representative
value. Our way of going through them will seem to the theorist
himself very much like cutting the Gordian knot. But then
Gordian-knot cutting is just what is actually happening in society
all the time, even up to the very inmost chambers of the Supreme
Court, after it has been flooded with the finest of all fine thcroics.
So that if we do cut the Gordian knot in the right way, we are
merely presenting the social truth.
Because of the different points of view involved in the words
law and government, the "senses" which we can discriminate in
the use of the word law will not correspond exactly with the senses
we found for the word government. The phenomena are all one,
the fields into which the phenomena are divided are the same, but
where we had to force the word government a little in one direction
to cover them, we should have to force the word law even more
in other directions. Fortunately, nothing turns on the words
except simplicity of expression, and that we have long before this
been compelled to sacrifice. I will merely indicate the way the
two words, law and government, correspond and dilTcr in their
applications, before going on with the analysis of the facts.
Corresponding accurately with the field of phenomena I have
called "government in the broadest sense," we have also a law
in the broadest sense. The dictionaries tell us, however, that
the word law is obsolete in this sense, and that the word custom
has replaced it. This field includes all the established, socially
enforced, modes of activity, not mediated through a dilTerentiated
governing body. It involves, or rather it is one form of statement
jy^ Tin; I'ROCKSS OK GOVERNMENT
of, tlic t(|uilil)ration of interests, the balancing of groups. I shall
not (leal with it directly in this work for the simple, practical reason,
that if I succeed in interj^reting tlie more complicated processes of
the equilibration of interests through representative groups, I
shall at the'same time have provided the basis for the interpreta-
tion of the less-complicated cases without further words.
Corresponding to government in the narrowest sense, we have
law in the narrowest sense, namely, our ordinary law of the statutes
and the jjrecc-dints. It is that part of the habituaUocial activity
(which is either formulated or^nforced, and most commonly both
formulated aJid'cnfbrc"cd,"througha differentiated governing body.
(Customar)' law as applied by'courts is not technically formulated,
and international law is not technically enforced, by a differentiated
governing body, but we need not consider those distinctions here.)
It may seem that law in this sense is something " beyond " the
governing body; but it will be remembered that I have insisted
that the government itseh can only be mterpreted, or adequately
stated, in terms of the interest groups it represents; and law is
merely another manner of statement of those same interest-group
facts, so that the correspondence is in fact exact. [The interests
that function through government, and that are government in
the sense that the governing body is only their instrument or tool,
are the same interests that hold law in place and bring changes in
the law. ^
As government in what I have called the "intermediate" sense
is a process which from the practical standpoint of the actors is not
complete, but incomplete, wt have corresponding to it, not law, but
rather projects of law. As for the possible fourth sense of govern-
ment, the government of minor organizations, such as corpora-
tions, tlic law aspect will readily be recognized in the constitutions
or charters, and in the by-laws and the enforced customs and
methods of the organization. I will just add, to avoid miscon-
ception with reference to all this comparison between government
and law, that while government includes many specific acts (or
individual acts), and while law seems to imply the generalized
rule, there is no fundamental difference between the two; the
LAW 275
distinction lies rather in the character of the representativeness
of the activity, partly with reference to the extent of the groups,
but more especially with reference to the duration of the activity
in time.
We have now to proceed with the analysis of law as it is mediated\('
through differentiated government. Hereafter wherever the word
law is used, it is this kind of law that is meant. Let us first make
a list of the activities which have to be taken into account in con-
nection with the law process. They include :
The written rule printed in statute book or volume of precedents, accom-
panied most often by written interpretations handed down by the courts.
The plaintiff and the defendant.
The activity of one portion of the population, probably very large, along
the lines prescribed, or, better said, described, in the written text.
The activity of another portion of the population, probably very small,
along Hnes conflicting with those described by the written law.
In the background, the activity of some law-registering body, legislature,
or court, our authority (or the text.
The activity of a set of officials, including public prosecutors, who seek
with greater or less energy the persons whose activity deviates from the line set
forth in certain parts of this law and who bring them before courts.
The activity of certain persons, the lawyers in private practice, who rep-
resent persons who do conform to the habit in the effort to penalize others
who do not conform; also the activity of those same lawyers in representing
those who do not conform.
The activity of a set of persons, the judges, who measure conformity or
non-conformity, declare it in formal terms, and impose penalties.
The activities of a set of persons who execute penalties or enforce decrees.
The activities of a set of persons who, placing themselves at various points
in the process, and allying themselves with various groupings, reflect or repre-
sent the tendencies of the groups in various degrees of completeness through
spoken or written language.
Needless to say, none of these groups is exclusive of others.
Some of them have a personnel which for fixed periods of time can-
not be altered ; but that very personnel may belong simultaneously
to several other groupings. So a sheriff may at the same time be a
criminal, a plaintiff in a civil suit, and perhaps also a lawyer in
practice.
276 Till': PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
In listing these groups, I have not gone behind the legislatures
into the grouj) process there represented, for the reason that I am
here confining myself in the main to the consideration of the law
phase of the process, as abstracted from the further governmental
phases. Nor have I complicated the statement to include "dead-
letter" law. We shall give that special consideration in due time.
Sup|)Ose we ask ourselves: "What is the law?" meaning not
what is the meaning of the word, nor what is the best expression of
what lawyers say about it, but what is the solid ground for our
study of the law as it exists in the life of social men.
Certainly the law is not the attested document offered us by
the secretary of state or by the clerk of the court. That is a defi-
nite enough thing, but it only indicates to us what to look for and
where.
Certainly the law is not the theorizing activity of any group or
portion of a group of men: that is, it is not the verbal or written
arguments of the men who take part in its processes within or
without the differentiated governing body. "Such is the law,"
may end neatly a speech or argument, but it merely indicates a tag
or lalx'l of the law, an activity representing other activities and still
others at possibly a great degree of removal.
The law is not primarly what the governor does, nor what the
sherilT does, nor what the judge does, nor what the law}^er does,
nor what the bailiff does, nor what the criminal does, nor what the
man who varies from the prescribed (better said, described) rule
in civil cases does.
The law at bottom can only be what the mass of the people
actually does and tends to some extent to make other people do by
means of governmental agencies. (I repeat. I am not speaking
as the lawyer speaks when he looks out of his window upon society.
I am sjx-aking of society with the law7er included as part of the
process.) [jThe law, then, is specified activity of_men — that is,
4 activity which has taken on definite social forms — embodied in
grou]^ which tend to require conformity to it from variant indi-
viduals (these themselves appearing in groups and having their vari-
ant actions valued and judged only as affecting groups), and which
LAW 277
have at their disposal, to help them compel these variants to adapt
themselves to the common type, certain specialized groups which
form part of the governing body of the society, that is, certain
organs of government.!
With this formal statement, however, we are by no means out
of our difficulties. Rather our difficulties have just begun. We
must follow this statement of the law as activity through many
intricacies and show that it is adequate, which means both that it
is a useful working statement, and that it ignores no phases of
importance to us. We shall have to test its application to differ-
ent kinds of law; we shall have to reckon with "dead-letter law,"
with survivals, with law-making, with the systematic side of law,
and with all the "theoretical" phases of law interpretation and law
enforcement. These questions will be illustrated and discussed
in general terms in this chapter, but they will accompany us all
through the rest of the book.
In taking up different kinds of state-enforced law for purposes
of illustration, I shall pay no attention to the distinction between
criminal and civil law. It is not a distinction that is useful here.
Indeed it is a distinction of a kind which is very important for us
to break dowTi and obliterate. It is a lawyers' distinction, having
to do primarily with "process" in the technical legal sense, and
while it is an important distinction practically, even in the law-
books it breaks dowTi theoretically on the test of penalties, and on
every other test as well. From our point of view there is no law
that is fundamentally more "public," none that is more private,
than any other. The most insignificant suit between two petty
disputants over a contract is dealt with socially on the basis of
great group interests which have established the conditions and
the bounds for it. All law is social. Every bit of law activity
may, it is true, be stated as a sum of individual "acts;" but every
bit may also be stated in group terms, and this latter is our method
of statement here. We do not ignore John Doe's doings, but we
state John Doc's doings just as they are given to us, with all their
social meanings, values, and realities.
/
278 Tin: I'KOCESS OF GOVERNMENT
1 proivrd now to illustrate this i)osition on law facts of two
kinds, which 1 will only roughly distinguish between by designat-
ing, first, those in which, at a given time and place, any individual
mav potentially be involved as defendant; and second, those
which, at a given time and place, are directed only at a given sec-
tion of the population, assay at some particular trade or profession.
The distinction is rough, because in the latter case any individual
may potentially go into that defined section of the population, and
because in the former case all individuals are so specified them-
selves as bits of society that what we may call their " potentialities"
an- not identical for any two of them. It answers, however, our
present jiurposes.
As an illustration of laws of the first kind, let us take the law
forbidding murder, limiting our consideration to the taking of
human life in those rough forms, such as by direct act, by durect
agent, or in a limited degree by gross negligence, which almost alone
we have thus far undertaken through government punishments to
suppress.
Even in Sicily, where the proportion of homicides is, I believe,
greater than in any other civilized region, the common habit of
the population is "not-killing." In the United States perhaps one
person in io,ooo commits homicide each year. In the greater
part of Europe the proportion is very much less than that. Some-
times it is only one in 100,000, or in 150,000. And yet possibly
there is not a single human being in all these stretches of the world
who could not, on sufficiently close analysis, find tendencies in
his life toward the use of murder as a technical means to attain
certain of his ends. ("Means and ends " is merely common speech
to indicate the killing activity in its earliest stages, where it is
more or less promptly inliibited.) Every person is, in short, poten-
tially a murderer.
The definition of murder is, of course, not uniform. Different
conditions produce different killing reactions and produce different
" crime " judgments upon them by society. Nor does the dictionary
definition of the crime correspond necessarily with the actual social
habit of crime and crime punishment. In Sicily certain forms of
LAW 279
feud killings are eliminated from murder as it appears in the real
law of the land ; the letter of the statute may cover them, but the
actual maintenance of a non- killing activity through governmental
agencies is not seen. In certain mountain districts in Kentucky,
Tennessee, and neighboring states, in the same way, certain feud
killings cease for considerable periods to be murder as actually
reacted on by government. In our large cities conditions arise,
that is, certain sets of interest groupings arise, which at times come
near to eliminating special forms of murder from the legal reac-
tion. Indeed, apart from the formally "justifiable homicide,"
there are nearly always more or less definite classes of murders
which are actually excluded, as, for example, often the killing of
a seducer. I mention this unenforced "law" only to postpone its
consideration for a few pages.
Now, the fact that every person, roughly speaking, is poten-
tially a murderer, so far from operating to prevent the development
of actual law against murder, is just the basis on which that law
appears. Of course, merely because every person may use murder
as a method, it does not follow that every person will carry his
activity through on that line. There are many alternative lines
of action. But enough murder is committed so that — I merely
register the fact — a great interest grouping develops which reacts
on murder not as a mere bit of technique but as an objectionable
content in the social living. It specifies certain forms of killing for
its attack and it strikes at them by various means which in the end
take the form of our judicial process through the differentiated
governing group or organ, with the continuing possibility of the
use of lynching or the sheriff's posse or vigilance societies under
special conditions. Lynching, it may be noted, is from one point
of view an embryonic governmental activity itself, while from
another point of view it is an offense against the government ; each
point of review represents a group attitude, and according as condi-
tions cause one or the other attitude to prevail does lynching spread,
or is it suppressed.
We find in society at this stage on the one side the murdering
activity, and on the other side the non- murdering, murder-sup-
28o I hi; process of government
pressing activity. Thi-s is a division merely on the particular
plane of murder in the limited scoix; of the word given above. We
cannot go Inliind it into the hearts of men or above it into the idea
of justice to exjiiain it. We must recognize at the same time all
the countless other groui)ings or other planes, and from them we can
feel our way to interpreting the form of the murder grouping at
anv given time, and the intensity of the reactions. These other
groui)ings are shifting, and, as individual men find themselves
placed among them, wiU, now one, now another, emerge into the
murdiring group and receive the reaction, through the governing
body, of the non- murdering group. It is true that even in our
most disorderly societies today the murdering group is very greatly
reduced in numbers; and this reinforces our ordinary modes of
speech so that we come to regard its members strictly as individuals,
acting strictly with individual responsibility, and to discuss it as an
individual phenomenon. But the group nature of the activity
struck at by law appears whenever we appeal to statistics, when-
ever we talk of the "good example" or "moral effect" of punish-
ment, and indeed whenever we mention murder at all, for murder
is a special form of life-taking definitely marked out by the reacting
group. It is impossible to try a murderer purely as an individual.
The ordinary' speech points to the murderer as an individual and
to the law as a generalized social rule, but actually the murderer,
that is liis murdering activity, is just as much generalized, just as
much "social," as is the rule, and apart from the murdering and
non-murdering activities there is no rule, save as a differentiated
phase of the governing group and of the various kinds of represen-
tative "opinion groups."
Turn now to law which directs itself against some phase of
activities which are segregated in a particular trade, profession, or
section of the population. Here the case is not so simple. How
are we to state the facts here in terms of a group habit tending to
extend itself ? Suppose we take the Sunday-closing law governing
saloons. The activity against which the law is directed is the
selling of liquor in saloons on Sunday. Now, if we should isolate the
saloonkeeper and describe the whole activity in terms of him as
LAW 281
an individual, or even in terms of saloonkeepers as a class, we
should have difficulty. For manifestly we cannot find a great
saloonkeeping population closing its doors on Sunday and trying
to make the doors of a few open saloons also close. But such
statement is little more than a caricature of the social fact. When-
ever the saloonkeeper hands a glass of beer over his bar there is
another human being on the other side of the bar who is taking it.
While these are thus engaged, there are other people passing along
the street in front of the building, perhaps on their way to church,
witnesses of what is happening, in other words participants in the
action to the extent that their church-going activity is disturbed.
Later in the day there wiU be a certain number of drunkards on the
streets, brushing against men and women who thereby participate
in the total activity. Also there will be a certain amount of noise
in the city and a certain distortion of the activities of people for
whom this noise is a disturbing element. Mix in a few fights, a
few wife-beatings, a few empty larders at a new week's beginning,
a certain increased amount of various other activities known as
"vice " and whatever other ingredients exist, and you have the total
of the open-saloon-on-Sunday activity at which our assumed law
is hitting. Out of all this you get a Sunday-closing interest group
in the political field, and it is this group which hits at the open-
Sunday group. The open- Sunday group, for its part, is made up
of a large number of persons who do not own saloons, as well as of
all, or nearly all, of the saloonkeepers, brewers, and distillers. As
formulated by the governing body, the law will specify the saloon-
keepers for the observance of the rule and for penalizing in case of
non-observance, but the law as a social habit of action involves the
largest part of the population as acting and enforces itself upon
the other part. The saloonkeeper stands at the center in the place
of prominence merely for technical purposes. Our point of view,
then, does not fail to cover the facts here, any more than in the case
of laws like those against murder.
In the case of legislation governing life-insurance management
the analysis goes on similar lines. Here there is a large, well-defined
group of policy-holders whose interests have been hurt at certain
282 i lli: PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
jK)ints. Thcri' is a small grouj) of insurance-company managers
(with tluir outside allies) who have been rloing the hurting in cer-
tain ways. There is, let us assume, a resultant law specifying
forms of iH)licies and modes of management. We may contrast the
grou|)s involved by the catchwords, the safe-policy group and the
unsafe-i)olicy group. The safe-policy group, including policy-
holdirs, agents, and managers, predominates, then, and strikes
through government at the unsafe-policy group phenomena wher-
ever they appear. It might be that all managers appeared on the
unsafe- ixilicy side and all policy-holders on the safe side. That
would be a transitory phenomenon, highly significant for concrete
interpretations while occurring, but nevertheless not the most
significant line of division for getting down to the bottom of the
law activity as we find it existing. This illustration like the others
has been treated here right in the bed of social habit in which it lies,
without any attempt to go far in comparing the given groupings
with groupings on other lines in the given society. That phase
will get attention later.
Should \ve take even such a detail of commercial law as, for
example, the proper phrasing of a promissory note, we must regard
it also as a w-ay of acting tending to impress itself upon variants,
and penalizing them through government functions, when they do
not conform. This is the most complete statement of the law to
which we can aim. All the other characteristics, which for certain
pur{X)ses (which is the same as saying from certain group points
of view) are often held up as fundamental, slip down to their
projxT proportions and allow themselves to be stated as incidental
to this characteristic group activity which itself is the law of the
society.
If we take up now the question of laws that are not enforced
wc can see better what place they occupy in society. Suppose it is
a question of a blue law which forbids the selling of goods, includ-
ing, say, milk, on the Sabbath. Milk is habitually sold by all the
milk dealers to all or nearly all their patrons seven days a week.
Yet the words can be found on the statute book which forbid it.
LAW 283
If the law is to be defined in terms of the statute book, then such a
law exists. But if we turn to the activities of the people, we
observe at once that there is no such law in existence at the given
time. There is no non-milk-selling-and-using group tending to
require conformity from any would-be milk-selling and milk-using
group. At most there is a little inchoate material from which such
a group might develop. Nevertheless the situation in society is not
what it would be if that law in so many letters were not on the stat-
ute book. Any proper local official, no matter what variety of
interest he represents, has it in his power to function as though
it were a law, and so in very fact to make it law again, or rather to
start the process of making it law again. His activity may be
checked, almost certainly will be checked, and he will be overthrown
if he persists. But that is neither here nor there. What we
observe is that there is a track or a technical means by which milk-
selling on Sunday can be suppressed without the issue passing
through the legislature. Should a vigorous anti-milk-selling group
ever develop it can push its activity with fewer obstacles than if the
old blue law had been repealed. Here is observable fact, free, or at
least free so far as my understanding goes, from the implications
and coloring of any particular group-made theory about the law,
about the Sunday-observance ideal, or about social life in general.
We observe as fact that just as an easier technique is provided for
changing a statute than for changing an article of the constitution,
so an easier technique is provided for making law in the field of
dead-letter law than for making law in the ordinary legislative
field.
Incidentally, wc can now get light on the question whether a
majority of the population must always be discoverable on analysis
as standing behind each law, that is, whether the group having the
habit and tending to extend the habit must comprise a majority of
the population of the society in question, in order to entitle its
activity to rank as law. The distinction between majority and
minority now comes to appear as a rule of thumb and not as crucial
at all. Majority and minority are simply a bit of technique — a
very important bit, of course, which becomes vital content at some
284 rm: process of government
stages of tlif K"viTnmcntal process — and they are used as tests
mainly in certain stages of the legislative part of the government
work. They cannot be transferred to this portion of our analysis
with any claim of validity, and indeed they are practically not
needed. Anywhere along the majority and minority lines we may
expect to fmd a law-making struggle going on. We may indeed say
that it is invariably possible to decide by direct inspection whether
a bit of formal law is or is not actual law. Actual law tends to
run well up toward general observance so swiftly that we hardly
havr a chance to notice it at the minority and majority dividing line.
"The law of a society is something beyond the sum of its laws."
\Miat that common manner of statement means is merely that the
process of summation is not the process which will give us an
adequate picture of the whole body of the law. And the reason
summation is inadequate lies in the abstract, and hence artificial,
nature of the components which it is attempted to add together.
It is not merely laws but rather systems of law with which we
actually have to deal.
Now my previous illustrations in this chapter have been, as I
have noted, abstract in just this sense. I have mentioned particu-
lar laws without carrying the analysis back into the whole system in
which they are placed. Each particular law rests in a great habit
background of law, that is, has its place in the system. The value
of each law, its meaning, is known only in terms of the values and
meanings of the other activities which taken all together make up
the system. In the instances above we were concerned with tra-
cing roughly for purposes of illustration the immediate activity
groups which support— or, better said, which are — the law, but
not with getting their full values. If these groups w^ere not them-
selves taken by us as immediately given phenomena just as they
appear in the complex social grouping with its great habit back-
ground assumed we should go wTong. That is, if we attributed
any force or power or value to the groupings behind their immediate
operation in the law, we should be tangling our feet. But error
of that kind is not made here. It is necessary, however, to com-
LAW 285
plete the picture by considering the system of law and what it
means.
Now it is in the fact that the law is thus a great system to which
such a term as "coherent" can be applied; it is just in this fact
that much of the mystery and metaphysics of current legal theories
develops. But if we hold to the view that all law is itself activity,
we have no reason for wandering off into the mysteries, or prefer-
ring the least stable to the most stable elements in our explanation.
It is of the very definition of activity that it is systematized. Even
the simplest motion with which the physicist deals is part of a sys-
tem of motion. Wlien the geometrician gives position to a point,
he admits system. In living beings there is no function that is not
systematized. Behavior is a word biologists are now using of the
very simplest reactions of the simplest organisms, and except as
system it cannot be comprehended at all. All the actions that
enter into the behavior of an idiot are correlated, much more all
the activities of a mentally competent person. True enough, we
can choose many special points of view from which we will say
that a certain lot of activity is not systematized, but here we are
merely adopting a group's position as our own position from which
to view the world, and we are judging along the lines of that group's
activity; and the denial of systcmatization so uttered is a limited
denial of a limited form of system, no matter how vehemently or
how absolutely phrased. It is a representative activity, reflecting
certain group interests along certain lines, but not capable of ele-
vation for use in broader fields.
The common fault in overemphasizing the system character-
istic of law, and contrasting it with assumed unsystematized activity
outside it, is seen in the giving to a system of law of a certain individ-
uality or personality, and treating it as though it developed by its
individual and personal power, and as though capable of inter-
pretation in that way. Such an attitude represents a certain
amount of truth, which we must be careful not to lose. But its
emphasis leads us to error far greater than the bit of truth involved.
Wliat we have then is not a series of laws, or, I may say, law
activities, disconnected from one another like so many pebbles in a
286 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
|)Hf, lo use a common illustration. Instead, we have these law
aclivitii's so knit together in larger groups that by analysis on a
(iilTennt i)lane we can point out what we may call a single group
activity rejjresenting a whole set of laws. For instance, the par-
ticular kind of disturbance which produced the group reaction
against murdir may be examined on a plane on which it will be
found to be assimilated with a lot of other disturbances, all pro-
(hicing or tending to produce reactions. That is, the social situa-
tion in which the reaction against murder occurs will perhaps show
reaction against minor assaults, against brawlings, and against
se.x .violence. Wliere there is a reaction against one form of offense
against property there will doubtless be reactions against other
forms. A code of commercial law will show not merely a group
activity for each item in it, but a group activity for large portions
of it; jx^rhaps one group activity can be found for the whole or
nearly the whole of such a code, perhaps several will cross one
another in it; that is a matter for direct obsen^ation to decide.
Thus, likewise, when we find municipal ownership of street rail-
ways, we may or may not find federal ownership of steam railways.
In a highly representative discussion group, this assimilation wiU
almost certainly appear; but I am not considering that now, but
the deeper-lying groups which support the law.
It is always a matter of direct observation and of nothing else
to show what law groups can be analyzed out of the mass. If
perliaps the whole mass of law in a given society can be interpreted
in terms of a set of groupings, which bring it in contrast with the
whole mass of another society, resting in another set of groupings,
that also will be a matter of observation. And the fundamental
jioint for us to notice in connection with this systematization of
the law is that our reasonings upon it in large masses caimot extend
farther than the facts of our observation; we cannot make any
progress toward building the law up out of reasonings of that kind
any more, for instance, than the student of the evolution of animal
life could build up the succession of forms except by studying the
facts of the pathway that life has followed. Within their great
s)'stems of facts both biologist and student of law can bridge gaps,
LAW 287
supply missing links, and work over the material to a very limited
extent. But the student of law like the others must stop there,
even in his study; much less has he the right to attribute to the
system as such any self-realizing capacity.
It may have occurred to some readers while I was discussing
majority and minority aspects of the groups that sustain the laws,
and also while I was discussing dead-letter law, that I did not make
sufficient allowance for the power of "the government" itself, and
that it would be much simpler to attribute results to this power
directly, than to attempt to put through the analysis in terms of
groups. It would certainly be simpler, but not simplicity of the
helpful kind, for our problem is to analyze this very power itself.
Similarly, it is simpler and easier to say that the weight of the
"whole society" is back of the law than to make a painstaking
analysis of that weight.
Government itself, like the factors indicated by "ideas," is
organization, and its representative activities in themselves add to
the effectiveness of the process at various stages. With the ques-
tion as to what increase of pressure may be attributed to them we
shall have to deal in due time. What we can see here from the
point of view of law as system is that complexes of groups, working
together through the government, combine their pressures. There
is nothing absolute about the combination. It does not conform
to any theory, and even the best theory only poorly conforms to it.
But where we have it, we have it ; and at certain transition stages
between adjustments, it seems to stand out as an independent
factor. That "seeming" however need not mislead us here.
From this point of view we get the meaning also of the state-
ment often made that law tends to spread, to generalize itself.
The spreading, the generalizing, is dominated entirely by interest-
group needs, and this whether the spreading is from one people to
another, or from one phase of a given people's activity to another
phase. If a system of law as a whole spreads, it is because of
similarities (we may say, system) in the groups as they stand. The
greatest case of all, that of the influence of Roman law on conti-
nental Europe, needs just this interpretation. The facts that Rome
288 im: I'ROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
was no longer existing (in the ordinary, concrete sense) and that
the influence had so wide a range, do not add any more mystery
to the process.
Each law, then, is a habitual activity, maintaining itself
tlirough organized government, and resting in a great bed of such
activities, in which, because of the many planes of grouping of the
pojjulation, it can be found arrayed with other laws, systematized
with them, depending therefore on them from one point of view,
while from the opposite point of view it itself is part of the bed or
beds of habit in which each of the other law activities rests. The
system characteristics are themselves reducible to activity, just as
are the laws separately considered. The whole is matter of obser-
vation, as activity, at every stage and at all stages of development
and operation.
To avoid misconception I have postponed to this stage the
consideration of the perfectly valid assertion that all law strikes at
something. That something will inevitably be human activity.
This is only to put in other language the principle of the group
interpretation itself. Any classification of laws into those which
hit at e\-ils and those which work constructively for public welfare
is fundamentally v\rrong, or, rather, it pretends to be fundamental,
when actually it is superficial. This is true of, I care not what.
Laws. Suppose we have quarantine regulations "to promote the
puljlic health": they strike at certain objectionable activities of
men. Take a campaign by the state to protect crops against some
insect pest : it proceeds by striking at certain careless activities of
men, and this whether it works by penalty of by propaganda, a
difference which is one of technique. Revenue-raising is a stage in
a great complex of striking processes. The scientific investiga-
tions of a government department of agriculture can be envis-
aged from the same point of view. There would be no law, even
in the most extreme socialistic state, without this quality. Crim-
inal law, commercial kw, all law setting forth government activities
can be looked at in the same way.
I do not want to be understood, however, as saying that this is
LAW 289
the only point of veiw, or for all purposes the best point of view,
to take of the phenomena. Activity is very positive from the
point of view of the actors. The striking done by the law is not
anything negative which exists merely for striking's sake. But it
is never, on the other hand, a pure matter of everybody's wcKare.
However much any of it may be ennobled and glorified in the
speech that accompanies and represents it, the conflict phase can
be found when the whole range of the society in which it exists is
taken into account. For its interpretation the discovery of this
phase is essential.
This analysis of law activity is, however, not even yet complete.
There is still necessary a showing in outline of the processes by
which the various activities of the population are represented
through courts, legislature, and executive. Law-making and law-
sustaining pressures are the same, and in some of the preceding
illustrations we have already touched on the law-making phase.
Here we must consider both directly. We have to observe how it is
that even when the representative group appears to be taking an
independent initiative, it is still the group activities as actually
observable in the populace that carry forward, support, and are
the law. In connection with this the activity of the legal theorist
will, I trust, appear at something like its proper value in the whole
process.
The chapter on leadership and public opinion contained a
discussion of the representation of group by group, but we must
get here to even closer quarters with the process. If a political
party has carried an election and secured the passage of a certain
law, we can readily sec how the maintenance of that party in power
sustains the law, and further how the continued existence of the
underlying groups which potentially can call that party into life
again or call up a new party with the same policy or give the same
policy to some existing party will sustain the law long afterward.
But the party that won the victory on the particular issue has
much otiicr work to put through the government; or, what comes
to the same thing, the governing body, as it stands after the party
2()0 rilK I'ROCKSS OF GOVERNMENT
victory, has many tasks to jjcrform not decided explicitly by the
vote at the poles. It goes ahead and uses its "discretion;" that is,
to use a current distinction between terms, it acts as a representative
as distin^'uished from a delegate body. What arc we to say of the
group activities as underlying the law in the case of law promul-
gated by the governing body under circumstances like this ? The
jgoverning l>ody, of course, is a group, an activity, itself, and as
Isucii has its interest. But this special group interest is not nearly
so prominent as it is often made out to be. In a bureaucracy it
appears {x-rhaps more strongly than anywhere else, and here it
concerns matters of technique which may be annoying, but which
nevertheless permit almost anything in the way of dominant under-
lying group interests to pass through, however faultily. Usually
when emj)hasis is placed upon the government's own interest, it
is due to confusing the governing activities as such with the class
activities of the persons who are most prominent in, or who make
up, the governing body. The practical value of the confusion for
the participants at certain stages in the political process is not to be
denied, but nevertheless our analysis must distinguish the govern-
ing activities from the underlying activities, even in the case of a
feudalism, in which the land-holding interest forms a hierarchy
which step for step is identical, so far as personnel goes, with the
governing hierarchy.
Now, leaving the "government's own interest" to one side for
the present, we find many activities carried through the governing
body without the direct appearance on the scene of the underlying
groups through representation by differentiated activities of a politi-
cal character.
And yet those underlying activities are actually supporting and
indirectly " making" the law that results. And what is more, how-
ever indirect the process of making may seem to be, through what-
ever complicated technical elements of representation or control
it works, the law once made is just as much as in the former case
supported by the group activity and group interest. It has no
meaning without reference to that activity, and it is fundamentally
that a. livitv's creation and that activity's legal functioning, what-
LAW 291
ever its technical mediation. To make this clear we must come
closer to the individual psychic process than is usually necessary
in social interpretation, but only in order to remove misunder-
standings and preconceptions involved in the ordinary reports of
what is happening in a legislature, a court, or an executive ofl&ce,
such as we read in the newspaper dispatches.
Take an official functioning in the government group. A neat
illustration from the day's news is Secretary of War Taft as he
proclaims himself provisional governor of Cuba, announcing mean-
while 'that all Cuban institutions and laws ' will stand during his
tenure, save those which must yield to the intrusion of an executive
selected by other than the constitutional methods, that is to the
intrusion of himself. We read from day to day of Governor Taft's
"decisions" and orders. These come to us as though they
were qualities of the man, marks of his wisdom, elements of his
genius or incapacity, as the case may be. There is no objection
to such a statement for its o^vn purposes, but for our purposes it
merely indicates crudely what we must look for. Every " decision "
he makes will be really the pressing through to achievement of
some element of the Cuban population. The technique is very
different from what it would be with a smooth-running republican
government, but the concrete showing of results will be much
closer to what it would be under such a government than to what
it was under the crumbled Palma administration, or to what it
would be under a revolutionists' conquest. To state the law situa-
tion of the succeeding six months or more in terms of the intellect of
Taft or his successor as governor is a puny trifle compared with a
statement of it in terms of the Cuban interest groupings, Taft
entering as technique. And this is true without for an instant
taking away any of the actual value of the Taft-governing-body
in the interpretation. In photographing the surface of Cuba today,
Taft looms large; but in dissecting the country, Taft is merely
a ganglion, and it requires trained eyes, technical instruments,
and measuring rods to place him exactly. This is true even when
we take into account the fact that Taft embodies an American
technique of adjustment, and that he has the force of our army
292 Tin: TROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
and navy \xh\\v\ him. The only assumption I make is that Taft's
l)r()clamation sets forth the whole truth about the interest activities
involved, and that no further "United States interests" will force
themselves into the field. In the latter event the ultimate out-
come might be very di'Terent, but even then the value of this illus-
tration would not Ix- destroyed, for we have to do solely with pro-
cess, and the j)roccss which we are considering here w^ould be the
same in both cases.
it is so with every i)ublic official in every function. Perhaps
he has little discretion and we can easily watch the pressures
operatin.c; tlirough him. Perhaps he has great discretion, and we
have (lilficulty to keep ourselves from being led astray by his
prominence as a technical process. But in either case we must
push the analysis down to the groups represented, and in either
case we shall on the test find that our fullest and richest statement
of the law is in terms of the group activity tending to spread itself,
with allowance for the differences of technique in the governing
organ through which it functions.
In all this, of course, I am not taking sides with one interest or
another. My "anti-plutocratic" friend will tell me that because
some "plutocratic" measure exists and maintains itself as law the
interest groups arc not expressing themselves. It is because he
exalts "objectively" the groups for which he is a mouthpiece
activity, and contemns those which have found expression, that he
makes his complaint. Let him decry the "hard heart." Either
there is no heart at all in the process we are trying to study, or
else it is all heart. But that is a mere trifle of verbiage.
Of the habits of activity which seem socially indifferent I will
add just a word, because they may seem stumbling-blocks to some
critics of this point of view. It is very common in extra-legal life
and not uncommon in law activity to find an established habit
maintaining itself where one has great difficulty in putting his
finger on any interest groupings which sustain it that do not seem
purely formal and called into existence to support the theory. So,
for instance, certain rules of the law, concerning negotiable instru-
ments when tlicy are just at the transition point between the con-
LAW 293
dition in which there was an interest to create them, and the condi-
tion in which they have become such a nuisance that they must be
swept away. This period of indifference may last indefinitely.
It all depends on the shifting of the activities underlying them.
Fundamentally there is no reason why a thing should be done one
way rather than another, except as we find it in the very activities
themselves. The person accustomed to our marriage laws looks
upon them as "natural," and thinks other nations' laws are " queer "
and needing explanation. Our own he accepts as though they did
not need explanation at all. And yet no outside test will give one
the advantage over the other. The test must be in the activity
itscK. Now if a law establishes itself and works along smoothly
furnishing a course of conduct, not perhaps the one that would be
made afresh, but at least one which is not troublesome, we find as
a matter of fact that it usually maintains itself, call it from inertia,
stupidity, conservativeness, or what you will. This seemingly
indifferent activity is a real group activity, even though the
abstracting of an interest, a value, a meaning, in terms of other
groups, seems difficult. It is a law activity like any other; the
difficulty is only in the use of words to make it seem positively
worth while in common speech; in other words it is no difficulty
at all when properly approached.
Besides the representative determination of incidental issues in
law, there is also a process of filling in details, which is carried out
by the various portions of the governing body. Here also we may
treat law as the habitual activity of the society, sustaining itself
and extending its range through the agency of the governing body.
For example, we have a group activity in the commercial world
following certain law lines. Continually this law is being worked
up and expanded by the courts to fit variations in circumstances.
Or it may be a case of executive judgment which fills in the detaib
of some line of activity. "Municipal ownership of some enter-
prise" may be the general statement of a policy, but the selection
of alternative methods to secure it may fall to the executive of the
municipality. Here again the executive represents the great inter-
294 Illi: PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
est groui)ing, acts for it, or at timc-s for minor j:rroupings within it,
and so works out the i)lan. The law itself rests in the interest
grouping of the i)0|nilation.
Wliere we have the law worked out in the courts, as in the case
of the English common law, we find special cases leading to inter-
pretations and precedents, and so filling out a system of law, which
in the course of generations solidifies itself till it conflicts with
newly growing interests, which then modify the old precedents, or,
alternatively, create a new technical channel through which they
can effectuate themselves, and this technique again enlarges itself
into a system superimposed on the old. This process is observed
historically in both the creation of new courts and the introduction
of new writs. Usually a dominant interest group modified by
other such groups can be located, sometimes the interest group of
the lawyers must be referred to in interpretation, and very much
more rarely the peculiar interest of the court group as such. For
a sluggish or weak court, for example, technicalities may provide
an outlet which saves it labor and anxiety, but the precedents
accumulated in this way may become a disturbing factor, requiring
reaction from injured interest groupings as time goes on. How-
ever, the sluggish or weak court is itself capable of explanation in
interest-group terms.
Now in this court process of filling in the details of the law, and
of working it up, we can see the place of law theory better than in
any of the illustrations given before. As the various interests
present themselves in the courts, they are represented for the
special purpose by the advocates' activity, and the advocate
spc-cializes on working out the whole law situation from the point of
view of the interest he represents. As he reflects the legal world
from this point of view, he works out a theory of it. The theory of
course is most often put before us as though it were a purely psychic
phenomenon abstracted from the action to which it relates. It is
never that, but always itself an activity, reflecting in a particular
way the underlying activities. The courts make this theorizing a
dignified portion of their work. But they do not decide cases
purely in the highly rarified atmosphere of such theorizing. They
LAW 295
decide them by letting the clash of the underlying interests work
itself out, and then making the theorizing follow suit (not crudely,
remember, but as a representative process). Within fairly broad
limits theories will be found available for either apparent alterna-
tive of activity. When this theorizing activity gets away from the
lawyers and away from the judges, it works itself up into a philos-
ophy of law which is still more remote from the underlying interests,
which reflects them in even paler tints, but which, the paler it
becomes, is the more insistent on proclaiming the absoluteness of
its truth. In a later chapter I hope to show how the group inter-
pretation such as is here used is itself a group activity reflecting the
social process at long range ; not reflecting merely the legal activity
phases in limited statements, as do the theories of law themselves,
but instead reflecting wider and deeper groups with the law groups
imbedded in them and carried by them.
\\Tiat I have been saying of law is true also of constitutions.
For constitutions are but a special form of law. They are specially
guarded habitual activities of the society, enforcing themselves on all
would-be variants. In England, the constitution cannot be sepa-
rated from other law, except by subject-matter. It is found in
charters, statutes, and precedents. In the United States, consti-
tutions have a special technique, different from statute law, but in
subject-matter they overlap at many points. When the letter of
the constitution is dead, then we have a constitution only from the
constitutional lawyer's standpoint, but not from the standpoint of
the student of society. The British privy council, prominent in
the lawyers' constitution, is almost nothing in ours, while the prime
minister, who was never formally recognized by the king for what
he is before CampbeU-Banncrman's accession, has long been very
prominent in the constitution that students of government have
studied. The American method of electing the president is one
thing in the written constitution, and another in the actual consti-
tution. Russia has a constitution as much before revolution as it
can possibly have after. If one means by the constitution the
written instrument, then of course the revolutionists are lighting
2q6 tttk trockss of government
to gel a constitution. But if one means a certain part of the estab-
lished, specially enforced, activity of the society, then the movement
in Russia is merely to change the constitution, and to provide new
structures, new technique, to preserve the changes for the future.
Other organized activities besides political government also have
constitutions in the same sense. We could find in the Koran, for
instance, the constitution of Mohammedanism, so far as the viritten
words were adequately representative of the activity. The consti-
tution is always what is. Ferdinand Lassallc put it admirably,
though of course only for his limited temporary purposes, in his
address to the working-men of Berlin, "Ueber Verfassungswesen,"
when he said : " Sie sehen, meine Herren, ein Konig dem das Heer
gehorcht und die Kanonen — das ist ein Stuck Verfassung ....
die grossen IndustricUen — die sind ein Stiick Verfassung." King,
cannon, noblemen, capitalists, all are parts of the constitution —
and working-men as well.
But one more remark needs to be made before leaving this
general discussion of law, and even this has been anticipated. It is
common in many quarters to say that physical force at bottom
underlies the law, and often this physical force is referred directly
to the force in control of the organized governing body, to the
"Staatszwang." The latter view is inadequate. Even in Russia
today in its revolution it is not merely the physical force of the
autocracy and its army that preserves the old order. Organized
as it is, tlie autocracy with its armies would fall before a unanimous
people, even unorganized, which means poorly organized. The
population is clearly split even yet, and the government represents
enough of it so that it has a great force behind it in addition to its
physical force as represented by the army. The broader view,
namely, that physical force m general lies at the bottom of law, has
a certain measure of truth. It is true in the sense that the appeal
to violence is often the ultimate technique when all other forms of
technique fail. Sometimes violence is resorted to long before we
think other methods ought to have failed; that is a matter of the
particular organization of the government at a particular stage and
LAW 297
place. But we have only to look around us to see pressure in 1
thousand-fold forms actually at work. When we reduce all pres- ^'
sure to physical violence, we are introducing a hypothesis which is
not useful. The other pressures do not represent violence. They
are, many of them, as primitive, as "natural," if one will, as vio-
lence itself. They are given to us in our material. In the illustra-
tion of Taft in Cuba used above, the Taft regime rests, it is true, on
the physical power of the United States, exerted through its army,
but it rests on much more than that. The limits of physical force
are better indicated by the case of Spain and its army in Cuba.
Physical force must be relegated to the position of one among many
forms of technique, and the pressures must be taken at all times for
what they are — very richly human, not abstractly "physical."
CHAPTER XII
'iniO CLASSIFICATION OF GOVERNMENTS
I'vvrry schoolboy today knows that the presence or absence of a
hereditary monarch is not a test which will give him much knowl-
edge of the characteristics of a government. He knows roughly
how the English monarchy and the United States republic resemble
each other; how the two republics, the United States and Vene-
zuela, differ, and how the two monarchies, England and Russia,
differ. Perhaps he has been interested in watching Norw^ay in
its effort to decide whether it will get enough incidental benefits
from a king to make the luxury worth while.
The reason why the presence or absence of a monarch is not a
good test of the nature of the government is that under twentieth-
century conditions it gives very little evidence as to the manner
in which the interests of the country are mediated through the
government, the manner in which the group activities function
politically.
WTien Aristotle made his standard classification of governments
into monarchies, aristocracies, and democracies, with their normal
and perverted forms, he was fortunate in combining both a fair
practical classification of the governments he knew most about,
with a logical principle (that is, a verbal method) for distinguishing
them as simple as one, two, three — the rule of one, of the few, of
the many. True his normal governments could rarely, if ever be
found, and his abnormal forms, in varying degrees of abnormality,
were the only ones he really knew; but, for all that, his method of
handling his material was excellent; so excellent indeed, that it
succeeded in perpetuating itself in that form of activity which
consists in wTiting books or making speeches about government,
long after it had ceased to represent well the facts and after its
further utility had disappeared. This is too evident to need
discussion.
298
CLASSIFICATION OF GOVERNMENTS 299
It was on the basis of cightccnth-century facts that Montesquieu
drew the distinction between monarchy (law regulated) and despot-
ism (arbitrary), and made these two, together with the republic,
his three types of government. His classification was a good one
for his purposes and within the range of his material.
The facts of the present age have directed attention to parlia-
mentary and other methods of controlling the central governing
body; and along with this the historical stages of governmental
organization have come more clearly to view. In many recent
classifications there is to be observed a decided tendency to make
the fundamental distinction that between absolutism (despotism)
on the one side, and democracy (republicanism, the "legal state")
on the other. Classification within these divisions takes many
lines for different purposes, as in distinguishing degree of civiliza-
tion, methods of distributing powers, checks and balances, fields
of activity, and so forth. In contrast with these there are classi-
fications of a more concrete nature, designed to show the evolution
of the state, such as Letourneau's. Also we find a number of
hopelessly inexact distinctions which arise from bumptious
rationalism, such as Ostrogorski's between mechanical and
personal government, and another occasionally met with, con-
trasting theocracies with democracies, law as duty with law as
right.
I do not propose here to attempt to offer any classification of
governments of my own, or even to indicate a preference between
existing classifications. I conceive that there is a very large amount
of very hard work ahead before a classification can be established
which will be of practical service to the full corps of investigators
in government fields, and that for the present the best classifications
are those of special groups of governments, consciously limited to
special uses. What I propose is merely to set forth some of the
underlying similarities which exist in the process of government in
states which are sharply separated in many of the current classi-
cations, and further to indicate certain lines of discrimina-
tion I have found useful at one stage or another in the present
work.
300 llli; I'ROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
Kirsl of all it is nccessury to become clear as to what kind of
facts we arc classifying. As follows from what I have said in an
ciirlicr cha|)tcr, it is not the "state" as such that furnishes us our
material. The state as discussed in political science is usually the
" idea of the state," and that is not good raw material for an inves-
tigation. What Professor Burgess so admirably studied under
the name of the "state behind the government," is from my point
of view nothing else than government itself. It is a part set off
\J by fairly definite characteristics, with a technique_that ranges from
very little to very marked diirerentiatfons^; but there is nothing
alK)ut it qualitatively different from any other government. The
same interest groupings, in other words, \v^b,ichL-Sb.ow themselves
in administration, legislation, and the courts show themselves in
constitution-making and constitution-sustaining.
Primarily it should be the institutions of government, all those
I lu^ ditTerentiated activities which make up the governing body and
mediate the deeper-lying interest groups of society, which we should
attempt to classify. But no sooner do we attempt to study these
than we find we must take into account the various grades of
political groups (government in the intermediate sense) which
function through them. These range down from the political
parties as organized in "the government" through the parties organ-
ized outside of the government, to pdicy.i)rga,nizations, citizens'
associations, and political adaptations of non-political groups,
with no sharp dividing lines between them. |We are forcibly
reminded that the governing body has no value in itself, except
> as one aspect of the process, and cannot even be adequately
described except in terms of the deep-lying mterests which function
through it. It therefore appears hopeless to attempt to classify
governing bodies as abstractly stated by themselvesTjlAn institu-
tion, or even a set of institutions, which in formal statement seems
to be identical with or at least comparable to an institution or set
•^ of institutions in another society may have an entirely different
value because of ditTerent interest groups which work through itT
An Aztec "king," an Indian maharajah, a Russian czar, and^
British king are not easily comparable as functioning parts of
CLASSIFICATION OF GOVERNMENTS 301
government. So important indeed are the interest groupings in
classifying governments, that practically they are allowed for more
or less consciously in all classifications.
But now, in reacting against too superficial a statement of
governments in attempts at their comparison, we must be careful
not to fall into an error at the opposite extreme. There is a tempta-
tion to center attention strongly on the adjustment of interests
as such, and try to find the basis for comparison and classification
in the relative perfection of the adjustment, in the degree of smooth-
ness or friction in the governmental process. Should we do this
we should soon find ourselves outside of the limits of scientific
treatment, in other words giving a statement not capable of sufficient
generality in its application. We should inevitably be applying
our own group point of view as the test of that perfection, and at
the same time we should be apt to give too much weight to the
process as it appeared in discussion terms, too much attention to
vociferation. We should fall also into the related error of bringing
all governments wherever found into one long series from the
point of view of perfection, attempting to assign to each its relative
rank in the series.
As a matter of fact there is no necessary connection whatever
betweende^ees of perfection of adjustment and the types of govern-
ment as they appear in the ordinary classifications. Aristotle
assumed for each of his forms of government a normal, or perfect,
form; the test of its perfection being, in his phrase, how far it was
carried on "with a view to the common interest," in other words,
an entirely arbitrary test. A primitive anarchy, a tribe with no
crime, some despotisms, some republics may be said from some
points of view to approximate this condition. China, one may well
believe, has approached it over wide territories and for long periods.
On the other hand, just as Russia is fearfully out of adjustment today,
so is the same thing true in that " best of governments," the American
republic, though here we shall probably carry through our readjust-
ments by technical methods that avoid copious blood-shedding. It
is all a question of the existing interests, the rapidity of the change in
them, the methods they have found for harmonizing themselves.
k
302 riii: I'KocKss OF government
\\ r know lluil whcri' uclivilics arc relatively simple and uniform
a very high degree of adjustment may exceptionally be reached
without the use of a specialized governing body, or w^ith but slight
tra(*es of such sfK-cialization. We can conceive that even a large
jH)i)ulation, if its interest lines could work themselves out suffi-
ciently, and if no disturbing factors entered, might dispense with
a largi' i)art of the activities of its governing bodies. But we do
not know as a matter of fact any large population that has reached
anything like this stage, and — peace to the philosophical anarchists
— we do not see any indications that such a time is in fact coming.
\MKit we do observe is that the interests as they stand find many
methods of adjusting themselves, and in different combinations
can reacli relatively high degrees of adjustment by different
methods.
It follows from this that we must not expect practically to be
able to put all societies in one collection and run a scale of high
and low across the whole lot of them. Rather any standards of
perfection, of high and low, that are applied must be applied only
within the range of the particular type of interest groupings. It is
easy to see for example, how old Peru can be allowed a higher
development, within its range, than any great modern nation's
government has within its range. And so with many tribal and
village community governments. But all such judgments are
essentially inexact, for the limited group point of view from which
they are made is never overcome by them.
Now what all this comes to is that if we are going to get any
substantial basis for the classification of governments we must on
the one hand take pains to get the institutions of the governing body
out of their abstract statement all by themselves, and to get them
reduced to terms of the group interests which in each case are
functioning through them; and on the other hand we must avoid
letting any system of standards of good whatsoever serve as a test,
except so far as those standards are merely the direct and immediate
reflection in each particular case of the group process within it.
We must get all our values for comparison out of the governing
process stated in each case with its full representative meanmg.
CLASSIFICATION OF GOVERNMENTS 303
Let us take a look at two or three of the characteristic differences
in interest-group formations of the kind which are especially
important for our present purposes; remembering as ever that
there is here no pretense of comprehensive investigation, but
merely of the analyzing and illustrating of typical phases of the
process.
One of the first such distinctions which will be thought of is
that between the city-state and the nation. If the groupings form
themselves within the compact boundaries of a city wall, among
a comparatively limited number of people, we shall have a series of
successive governmental forms not identical with those found
among nations which comprise city and country on fairly equal
terms. The evolution of forms, so far as we can speak at all of
such a thing, will be very different in most respects. It is true that
a little ingenuity enables one to compare the Aristotelian evolution
series with European governmental evolution. But one, must be
very cautious with such comparisons. Centuries for the Greek
cities were longer than thousand-year periods for Europe. Forms
that occur in Europe did not occur at all in Greece. The whole
staging of the group process is^different. One contrast in govern-
mental technique is known to everybody. It is the presence or
absence of the representative system in the ordinary limited sense
of that term, very much more limited, remember, than the sense
in whicli I use the word through the greater part of this work.
Again we find an important distinction between interest group
formations with reference to locality. Sometimes they rest very
largely on locality, and at other times the groupings are not locally
distributed. Morgan's range of studies, for example, led him to
draw a fundamental distinction between the tribes organized in
clans (socially organized) and the politically organized peoples
resting on territorial areas. Genuine territorial interest groupings,
however, are, I am inclined to think, exceedingly rare. That is,
territorially stated interests can in most societies be better studied
when they are broken down into deeper-lying groupings, since the
special political technique that rests on their being territorially
consolidated is not prominent enough to center attention upon it-
304 I hi; process of government
Wc might say that I lungary, or rather the Magyar part of Hungary,
was op{)osc(l on a locality basis to the other nationalities within
Hungary and to Austria, but this has more the marks of a race oppo-
sition, and so would fall under the next line of discrimination to be
considered ; and more than that, whether as race or as locality, it is
necessary to reduce it for the greater part to economic groupings.
There were locality opi)ositions resting on different economic tenden-
cies, as Ix'tween North and South, or on commercial rivalries, as
between large and small states, in the early United States, but today
locality oppositions are very small. Some we find between cities and
rural districts, but inside the cities or inside the rural districts,
locality plays little part, save for administrative convenience, and
for the division of spoils. In the legislative field the locality basis
is mainly a survival, lending itself to abuse, and serving little
positive purpose. A San Francisco anti- Japanese movement is a
mere flash in the pan, so far as arousing locality oppositions goes,
however \iolcntly troublesome it may seem for the moment. Even
the "solid South" is more a surviving form than a substantial
element in our politics, and its future as a locality group will
strictly depend on the future of the negro problem.
A third line of distinction has to do with the extent to which
interest groupings are consolidated in different classes in the com-
munity. We can use the word class, holding fast to the essential
elements of its popular meaning, to describe any set of groupings
so consolidated in a particular set of persons as to make that set
of f)crsons, as a whole, come into opposition in a great majority
of their activities to one or more other classes which are likewise
sets of persons, embodying similarly consolidated groupings. We
must persistently ignore, or reduce to incidental details, all the
trivLilities of class distinctions which are often grossly over-
emphasized in excited discussions. The caste is a good example
of the word class as here used. The middle-age "Stande" func-
tioned in this way. The Jews with their physical heredity running
back everywhere but to Palestine, have kept themselves socially
distinct as a ckiss, though they do not function in that way in
America today. "Race" is most often a class of this kind, and
CLASSIFICATION OF GOVERNMENTS 305
we can see how the negro class in the South has modified methods
of government in southern states. The socialists insist that the
proletariat forms a separate class in modern capitalistic nations,
but what they have to show in nations in which socialists are numer-
ically many is not a class political activity, but a normal group
activity, becoming less class-like even in its talk, the larger it becomes
and the more fully it enters into the political process. Class as a
fact of talk is often very diflferent from class as a fact of men in
masses.
Suppose now we take a general formation of interest groups,
such as we know in our existing European and American countries ;
countries, that is, on a large scale, with a great complexity of
interest groups which manifest themselves in politics, with more
or less marked territorial and class distinctions, but without either
territorial or class distinctions as the dominant elements of govern-
ment, however prominent one or the other of such distinctions may
seem at certain stages of the process. It is evident that within this
range of nations the tripartite division into monarchies, aristocra-
cies, and democracies has absolutely nothing whatever to bring to
us in the way of making our material better capable of analysis and
study. We must examine these governments with reference to the
ways the interests work through the government, with reference to
the technique they follow, and to the special kinds of groups, or
organs, which exist to reflect them and to harmonize them. It
becomes a question of the amount, efficiency, and variety of the
machinery that exists both to bring to expression those interests
that assert themselves directly in politics, and also to give recogni-
tion to those interests that arc represented only indirectly.
By way of approaching the governmental process here let us
first mark out abstractly and hypothetically two extreme types of
government within this range of nations. Let us set up, say, at
one end the hypothesis of a government consisting of an individual
who passes personally on every group antagonism at its very incep-
tion and allays it by appropriate action. At the other end let us
set up the hypothesis of a government in which every interest would
3o6 THK PROCKSS OF GOVERNMENT
Ix: able- to lind u Itchniquc for organizing and expressing itself in
a system in vvliich every other interest was equally expressed on
"fair" terms, so that in the final course of action all interests would
get their "due" weight. It is manifest that the very hypotheses
of such governments are absurd. And yet I do not knowj^hgt
pure despotism and pure democracies would be except these very
forms of government. Could we find them, they would both come
to the same thing in legislative and administrative results — that is,
government would follow concretely the identical lines, were one
or the other practiced in a given society. Actually there is always
an imminse amount of organization in any government; actually
there is always much discretional representation in any government;
actually there are always interests that are not able to get expression
in the government without disproportionate exertion, and actually
the transformations of the interests are always making trouble in
the government, to greater or less extent.
In the range of governments we have under consideration the
variation in the technique provided for giving expression to the
interests is very great. In Russia, for example, where the czar
serves both to hold together conflicting localities in one system and
to permit certain classes to exploit the others, there is just at present
no available technique for the most depressed groups but violence
or a show of violence. In the United States, with its fixed four-
year presidency and its Supreme Court with powers over consti-
tutional questions, we break through into violence at times, but
we can nevertheless count on running pretty steadily without it.
In England, with its parliamentary system, there is a still swifter
and more effective technique for the adjustment of such conflicts
as at the present time come before it. And in a Swiss canton, with
its referendum or possibly annual assemblage of the people, the
technique is even more effective.
But there is not one of these forms which can inherently be
said to furnish a smoother adjustment of interests than any other.
It all depends on what the interests are. In the Swiss canton the
groups are little strenuous, little crystallized, and little antagonistic,
and within the range of the canton's activities, the government
CLASSIFICATION OF GOVERNMENTS 307
that there exists tends to keep them from coming into sharp clash.
In England the test is yet to come. A method which, within the
limits of one large range of dominant interests permits the opposi-
tions to adjust themselves smoothly, may or may not yield to a
new-appearing set of interests which antagonizes all those which
have functioned in the previous process of adjustment. In the
United States we see the resisting classes giving way even in their
strongest seats of power. In Russia the same government that is
an agent in holding together the empire has identified itself so
strongly with one cross-section of the empire, that now it is blocking
those very portions of the populace for which the czardom at one
period of its history most strongly stood.
All these governments are but the interest groupings wrestling
with one another. In all of them we have interest groupings
finding their leadership in portions of the government. In some
of them we find a stratification of the interests more firmly estab-
lished than in others. Some of them we believe will prevent the
interests from stratifying better than others, that is, they will
produce earlier adjustments as the change in the groupings develops
itself. But we can in no case assuredly state that the method of
the one will serve as the method of the others. And the method
itself we observe to be always the resultant of the previous conflicts.
Only as we are given the extent of the stratification of the interest
groups and their range and intensity can we follow out their methods
of expressing themselves.
Let us next take a look at certain of the technical methods by
means of which groups operate through the government and keep j /^
its activities in line with their tendencies. We find the groups,
first, ousting the person of the ruler; second, dividing him up into
two or more institutions; and third, exerting a direct control over
some of his specific activities while he remains in oflSce. We find
these technical methods in all stages of combination.
Heredity, election, and lot are technical methods having to do
with the person of the ruler. Heredity may be broken in upon by
revolution and expulsion, either of an individual or of a dynasty.
3o8 Till': PKOCKSS OF GOVERNMENT
KU (.tion may 1k' for a dynasty, for a life, or for a term of years. It
also may 1k' broken in upon Ijy revolution. What is true of election
is true of lot. While I am not engaged in interpreting these partic-
ular institutions, I think anyone may see for himself how closely
they correspond to the interactions of the interest groupings,
whether consoli(hited in classes or functioning freely and easily
as groups of ra])id transformation; one may even estimate some-
thing of the possibilities of lot along just these lines.
It has frequently occurred, however, under particular kinds of
relations between groups, that there has been pressure enough to
modify the activity of the ruler without ousting him, in such manner
that the basis is laid for a permanent division of his functions into
two or more institutions. One simple way of doing this is to make
him bind himself not to do certain things. The early English
charters are in point. Wliile in form limitations of the king's
power by himself, they actually gave the barons a certain definite
corporate standing in the general government with the right to
intervene at certain points. The development was very marked
later on.
This division of a ruler's powers has given us, on one side the
courts as independently organized, and on the other side the
legislatures with their chambers. Each such development, and
each stage of such development, has been the result of very distinct
group (usually class) pressures. Legislatures and courts as we
commonly know them are by no means the only agencies that have
thus been formed to represent group activities in government.
There have been many varieties of such institutions with all sorts
of values, and having all degrees of permanence in their repre-
sentative work. But these two are the ones which have established
themselves most solidly and sho\ATi the most efficiency as tools.
Wliat the value of any such institution is depends entirely, as we
shall later see more clearly, on what the pressures are that are
working through it.
Another common division of a ruler's powers is territorial.
Provinces are interest groups themselves, and they compel, as
such, a differentiation in rule from time to time, whatever the
CLASSIFICATION OF GOVERNMENTS 309
tcrminolog)' of motives is in which the developments are ordinarily
described. The division of powers between central and local
governments is to be interpreted in the same way. I am, of course
not reducing this to the results of a class struggle in the usual
limited sense, but stating it in terms of that wider process of the
adjustment of interest groups, of which the class struggle is but one
phase. Thus the federal and state governments in the United
States rested at the foundation on different ranges of group interests,
and the later discussion of states' rights reflected differences in
interests, getting a large part of its vitality from the slavery question,
for which it, as a discussion activity, meant a technical means of
operating in the federal government.
But now, even after the ruler — I am of course merely using him
as a shorthand designation of the government — has been, so to
speak, split up in time and split up in space in these ways, there
still remain the technical methods for direct group control of him
just as he stands at any given moment. It will be understood that
when I say direct control, I mean control by a differentiated tech-
nique; for in the wider sense all government of whatever kind,
as representative of group interests, is under control, and is itself
nothing but control, so to say, personified. As the group process
continues, we find developed by it in the government all the different
forms of the differentiated suffrage, of party organization both
inside and outside the government, as the expression goes, of par-
liamentary technique, and of the referendum. All of these are
direct functions of the group process, resting on the mass of the
society, on facilities for contact and communication, and on the
varieties and intensities of the interest oppositions.
In this sketch of the technique I have, however, thus far only in
part indicated the working of the group process. I have been
speaking about the groups in opposition to "the government,"
but it is necessary to supplement this by pushing the analysis farther
and showing "the government" itself at every stage, even in the
most extreme despotism, supported on groups, or classes, of the
population. I will postpone this for a moment in order to take a
glance at two or three systematic classifications of government with
/^-
3IO
IHK PROCKSS OF GOVERNMENT
a viiw to sci-ing wlial vuluc may be atrtibutcd to them at the
present stage of our analysis.
Jn (listinKuisliing between the "militant type of society" and
tiie " industrial tyix; of society, " Herbert Spencer is really "framing
conceptions of the two fundamentally unlike kinds of political
orpanizjition." These are his own words in the first sentence of
the first of the two chapters of his Sociology, which discuss this
distinction. As contrasted with most classifications of government,
S|K'ncer's clTort makes a distinct advance because it gets away from
the verbalisms and formalisms, and tries to go down to interests
of a certain kind. Unfortunately, however, Spencer's "interests"
are not the real interest formations that exist in societies and that
are read directly out of them, but instead they represent Spencer's
own midtUc-class English groupal view-point, made coherent by
statement in terms of his own fictitious "feeling" elements. Take
almost any page in these chapters at random, and it will appear
that what he has in mind is gospel-truth liberty, the individual
owning the state, and the state owning the individual, and all that
sort of thing. Therefore, while in one sense Spencer is on the
right track, his actual results are utterly worthless, except for
the propaganda purposes of his own " liberty "-loving followers.
Of classifications of the formal nature consider first that of
Jcllinck in his recent work, Allgemeine Staatslehre. Governments
are for him either monarchies or republics. Monarchy is the state
guided by the will of a single person. Republic is every state
which is not monarchy. Applying this he tells us that at the very
least a monarch must be able to prevent any change in the constitu-
tion without his consent. Therefore he finds that England is a
monarchy. The veriest tyro knows, however, that in the last
resort the interests will inevitably express themselves through the
House of Commons, not tlirough the crown, nor through any
combination of crown, lords, and commons. Jellinek's line of
division may indeed have a certain limited value if interpreted
as mere technique for the interests, but it becomes an absurdity
when made a matter of formal law in the way that he understands
CLASSIFICATION OF GOVERNMENTS 311
and applies it. The interest groups of the nation function in Eng-
land through a single organ, or group activity, the House of Com-
mons, and in very truth the king changes with each change in
"the government" — the king, that is, not as such and such a man,
Edward by name, but as an official policy and government activity
carried out in Edward's name.
Take Bluntschli. To monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy
he adds a fourth kind of government, idcocracy, which includes
all states which rest on some ideal element, such as religion.
What little reference to the underlying interests there is in the tri-
partite classification disappears almost entirely in this fourth
member. We could indeed work up some kind of a statement
of the way groups expressed themselves through various belief
activities, but it would not be a good means of discriminating
between organized governments in any case, and it could
not possibly enter the same classification as the other three
forms of government, which are discriminated by a numerical
test.
Ratzenhofer offers an elaborate classification which, despite all
that he says of " Interessenvertretung," is based, both in general
and in detail, on arbitrary distinctions. First of all he makes a
fundamental separation between the state and the government.
Then he classifies states into absolute and legal ("Rechtsstaat").
So far as this is taken to mean that in certain governments there
is no organization provided for getting behind the ultimate decision
of a single individual while in others there is, it has value. But to
make it a fundamental classification of states "as such" overlooks
the facts that there is no monarchy so despotic that it is not imbed-
ded in custom; no ruler so powerful that the governing machine
he leads is not more active than he; and that both ruler and
governing machine must be themselves interpreted in every case
in terms of class interests. The fundamental opposition between
absolute and legal state is impossible both because the absolute
ruler is imbedded in law, and because the legal state invests its
officials with great discretion. Inside of each of these kinds of
"state" Ratzenhofer groups governments in an empirical manner,
312 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
aiming not to specify lyj)ical activities, Ijut to get a certain range
of states thrown roughly into a limited number of pigeonholes.
One recent writer, Leacock (Elements of Political Science),
throws a handful of modern states into a despotic class, and calls
all others democratic. Within the democratic states, he distin-
guishes as to whether they arc limited monarchies or republics,
as to whether they are unitary or federal, and again as to w^hether
they arc jxirliamentary or non-parliamentary. His first distinction
between the despotic states and democracies has, as we have seen,
its germs of sound meaning, not properly developed. Within the
democracies his hrst distinction turns on what is often an incidental
detail; his second concerns territorial groupings, which are impor-
tant, as having to do with the way governing activities are
distributed in space; and while his last distinction is on a solid
foundation, it cuts across all the others and could stand entirely
independent from them, if more adequately stated.
Hobhousc in his Morals in Evolution, an even later work, well
illustrates in its worst form the theoretical distinction between des-
potisms and other governments. After first setting aside clan and
tribal government as one division, he then distinguishes between
"despotism — the principle of force and authority " and "the prin-
ciple of citizenship, the common good and personal right." I only
mention it to show how this distinction ultimately lands in " prin-
ciples" at the maximum distance from facts.
In all this work there is of course much that is substantial in
the way of analyzing governmental structures. Professor Burgess'
canons of distinction in his chapters on the form of government, for
example, get reaUy to close quarters with the facts and give good
aid toward classifying types of governmental activities, even if
they do not go farther than preliminary steps themselves. And
so does Jellinek's further elaboration of the same distinctions.
The work of Hammond, a follower of Secley, in his Outlines of
Comparative Politics, should also be mentioned. He classifies
primarily aggregates of men, "political bodies;" whether simple,
as tribes, city-states, nations, or composite, as empires brought
together by force and voluntary confederations. For each aggre-
CLASSIFICATION OF GOVERNMENTS 313
gate he contents himself with indicating some trait of government
to be expected, but beyond that he does not feel justified in going.
He lays great stress on the class process where it occurs, especially
in ancient and middle-age governments, and gets good preliminary
results by this method, but he does not follow the group process
into later governments, and consequently even with his class inter-
pretations he falls short of what is necessary. What he has accom-
plished is, however, of marked value, and his lack of dogmatism
is by no means the least of his good qualities.
I proceed now to discuss at length the question of despotism,
especially with reference to its class basis, for it is of the greatest
importance. Let me first give a few quotations which are in point.
May, in the introduction to his Democracy in Europe^ says that
public opinion "is potent every^vhere" and that "it controls the
will even of despotic rulers." Freeman, in his Comparative
Politics (chap, v), writes: "In all times and in all places power
can have no lawful origin but the grant of the people." De Tocque-
ville, in his Democracy in America (chap, viii), comparing the
power of the king of France with that of the president of the
United States, says: "The supremacy of public opinion is no less
above the head of the one than of the other." James Bryce,
in his essay on "Flexible and Rigid Constitutions," says :
No monarchy is absolutely despotic, and least of all perhaps in the ruder
ages; for monarchs are always amenable to public opinion, and most so
when they are the leaders of a tribe or people in arms. The real distinction
is between a government checked by rehgious sentiment consecrating ancient
usage and by the fears of insurrection, and a government checked by well-
established institutions and legal rules.
Frederick the Great wrote: "Le souverain bicn loin d'etre le
maitre absolu des peuplcs qui sont sous sa domination, n'cn
est lui-meme que le premier domcstique." Consider also this
from the Coutume of Bayonnc (about 1273): "The people is
anterior to the lords. It is the people, more numerous than all
others, who, desirous of peace, has made the lords for bridling
and knocking down the powerful ones." Or this old Persian
314 llll': I'ROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
inscription: "A great God is Ahuramazda .... who created
Peace for man, who made Darius king." And this from Sadi:
The people are the roots, the king the tree;
As are the roots, so strong the tree will be.
Some of these quotations express aspirations rather than obser-
vations, and some go rather to the limited monarchies than to the
desix)tisms. I do not use any of them as authorities, but all of
them to ix)int to the dependence of the despot as well as of every
ruler on his people.
Suppose we are classifying despotisms and other governments
separately, calling the latter perhaps democracies. Can we then
say that the despot has "absolute" power? Surely not, without
giving a technical and closely limited meaning to "absolute."
It is not the despot, but despot plus army, or despot plus land-
holding class, or despot plus some other class, that dominates,
wherein despot appears merely as a class leader and it is not despot
but class dominance that is characteristic of the government.
The despot's personal discretion is exercised within class-established
limits. Moreover, it is never necessary — except in the extreme
event, under abnormal conditions — for the ruling class to have
physical force actually superior to the ruled class. If we offset as
equal in physical force a certain minority well armed and well
trained, and a certain majority poorly armed and poorly trained,
nevertheless we shall usually find that the rule is being exercised
by a minority smaller or weaker even than this. And when this
happens it inevitably means that the minority is not merely the
master, but also to some extent the servant, the representative, of
the majority. If the weaker group governs, it is because the
interest groupings in the stronger party to some extent support
it as their government.
We can state this truth in this way that, except in the case of a
subjected population immediately under the heel of the conqueror
under conditions of most primitive oppression, the ruling class
is to a certain extent the chosen (that is, the accepted) ruler of the
ruled class, not merely its master, but also its representative ; and
the despot at the top of the system is representative both of his own
CLASSIFICATION OF GOVERNMENTS 315
class, and to a smaller, but none the less real, extent of the ruled / •
class as well. If this is true we clearly are not justified in making /
a fundamental opposition between despotisms, let alone all mon-
archies, and other governments. For we have found a process of
representation in despotisms which is inevitable in all democracies,
and which may be distinguished by quantities and by elaboration
of technique, but not in any deeper "qualitative" way.
Or let us regard despotism from the standpoint of the individ-
ual's arbitrary will. Leaving aside the trimmings of despotism,
personal vices, pomps, and crimes, which are incidental, it is clear
that the despot must pass much the same content of group needs
and demands through his "brain" that would pass through a
representative assembly. He must get his information from other
people, which means at least the rudiments of an organized repre-
sentative system for at least one class of the population, and possibly
for others. He must leave an immense mass of detail work to his
lieutenants to perform, which means at least the rudiments of a
division of power, by locality, by function, or by both at once.
There will be established lines on which these functions will be
conducted. There will be limits to the activity of bureaucrats
and despot alike, which cannot be exceeded without penalties. /t--^
The setting of custom, in which government exists never disappears.
We must not let our peculiar ideas as to rights distort our judgment.
We put emphasis today on the sacredness of human life and not
on the sacredness of symbolic acts of worship. But just because
some petty despot is free to slaughter, but not to omit his religious
functions, we must not make the mistake of thinking that his
authority is "unlimited" in any peculiar sense qualitatively dif-
ferent from our president's. We have got to get the right balance
by observing facts — each side from the other side's point of view.
Russia is most often classed among despotisms in the extreme
abstract sense, in forgctfulncss of its 1)urc;uicracy, its organized
religion, its "grand-ducal clique," using that phrase as symbolical
of a mighty class force, and in forgetfulness also of what is of much
less importance, the "fundamental laws of the empire," mentioned
by James Bryce in the passage from which a quotation was above
3i6 tup: process of government
given, llu' law declaring the sovereign's autocratic power, that re-
quiring him to be a member of the orthodox church of the East,
and that fixing the rule of succession to the throne. Assuming
that the czar may alter these fundamental laws, and is indeed
thV only constituted agency for altering them, it woukl nevertheless
be foolish to think he could do it arbitrarily. His activity would
Lbc participated in by a very large number of very energetic
bishops, noblemen, land-holders, and bureaucrats.
' Despite all this, there is a very real basis to the emphasis that
is j)ut on the despotism as a distinctive form of government.
The real distinction is, however, merely one of technique in the
adjustment of the interests. Let us develop this a little farther.
There have been despots that have supported themselves on the
"people" as against the aristocracy. They are, however, excep-
tional and transitory. They illustrate interest pressures as well
as other despots do, but we may pass them by for the more common
case of the despot who leads the great land-owning class and
represses the " people." We find in this latter case a well-organized
system for bringing the interests of the aristocracy to expression.
Personal favoritism will be prominent in it, but then that is promi-
nent in any American legislature today. Other classes of the
population will have much greater difficulty in expressing them-
selves. They cannot organize permanently, and lack political
labor-saving devices. It is only in their greatest needs that they
can make themselves felt. A wealthy subject class may perhaps
succeed by bribery. A poor class must resort to violence, and
then only can accomplish anything under the pressure of direst
need. Probably it will aim at ousting the despot from his throne.
This accomplished, it will have no organization ready to realize
for it the goods it has desired, and it will permit another despot to
take the place of the last, hoping from him a better representation
of its interests. Or, even if defeated, but still strong enough for
possible revolution later on, it may be granted voluntary conces-
sions. These will be a very real political achievement on its part,
but, of course, only at enormous cost.
Suppose now a second class has asserted itself sufficiently to
CLASSIFICATION OF GOVERNMENTS 31?
get a formal method of access to the sovereign. It will need
guarantees for its method of access, not being able to trust to the
chance that it will not be crowded out in a neglected moment by
the old monopolists of power. As soon as two classes have entered
directly, even though on very unequal terms, we have a new organ-
ization, a new type of government. The old kind of absolutism
may seem to prevail, but the channels by which the class interests
flow through it have stiffened somewhat, and we have the begin-
nings of a more complex organization. Perhaps the class that has
struggled to expression may secure a charter or guarantee of certain
rights, whereby the despot agrees to limit himself in certain activi-
ties. Here we have the beginnings of the constitution, in the ordi-
nary sense, or, using the word constitution more broadly to include
the whole structure of the government, we have a change in the
constitution, with a specified point of leverage upon which the
resistance of the injured class can work. But what we have is
not really an absolute monarchy becoming limited. Rather it
is the establishment of new methods or channels, which make it
simpler for the old interests to express themselves in the govern-
ment, and which in effect raise one class which formerly had very
poor approaches to the despot to something approximating equality
with the position of the former specially favored classes. By
watching what classes, and how many, have secured organized
methods of keeping themselves fairly in the attention of the despot,
and by indicating the methods they use, we can classify or rank
the new form of government with reference to the old form of
single-class dominance.
In whatever way the development proceeds, tlie process will
be much the same. A legislature may be attached to the monarch;
the old council may have an additional chamber added to it; the
control of some portion of the finances may be specialized in hands
other than those of the monarch; certain courts, perhaps minor
ones, may be carefully segregated from the monarch's intervention.
A bit of the governing institutions may differentiate so as to allow
for the activity of an additional class. Or a bit of class organiza-
tion outside the government may solidify itself, and in time be taken
3i8 ini-: PROCESS of government
up into the «j;()vcTnment as a purl of it. Such developments have been
going on for thousands of years and they are going on today in our
most developed societies, in terms of group pressures, even where the
harder cLiss (h'slinctions have disappeared so far as their manifest in-
lUunce in the government is concerned. That peculiarity of structure
in the federal House of Representatives, seen in its scattered appropri-
ations committees, is the structural after-efTect of just such a conflict.
To come back to the despot, we can now view him in a phase in
which he shows us two different forms of leadership which need
to Ix- understood together. For the class which he immediately
represents, he is the ordinary leader of the organization type.
But at the same time he may fill the function of mediator as between
other classes. He can do this, however, only by virtue of the group
or class force behind him. Sometimes, as general of an army,
the despot will hold the balance between provinces which tend to
conflict. At other times he may mediate between classes not on a
locality basis. In all cases what he actually accomplishes will be the
direct resultant of the various pressures which enter into the system.
I have been giving my attention almost exclusively to the " inter-
nal" conditions as opposed to the "external" — that is, as opposed
to war dangers from abroad. These war dangers may be among
the factors in maintaining the despotic leadership, but that does
not take us beyond the field of group pressures. Tlie. -despot-is
there because he is needed, but this is only another manner of
saying he is there because the groups as a matter of fact loirajhem-
selvcs under the given conditions so as to maintain him. I am,
indeed, inclined to think that these external dangers as factors in
the maintenance of despotisms are commonly greatly exaggerated.
The home group formations are, in other words, vastly more
important than the direct foreign pressure. We can easily point
to modern nations which exist perpetually in the face of heavy
pressures of this kind from without, and yet are very far from
needing to resort to established forms of despotic rule. I may
add that so true is it in all stages of the social process that the home
pressures are vastly the most important in interpreting the process
of government, that in my illustrations I have generallv ignored the
CLASSIFICATION OF GOVERNMENTS 3^9
foreign influences entirely. These latter can easily be allowed
for in the method as minor variations of the group process. This
is not to say that the content of the governing activity in most
nations is not immensely affected by the war dangers of the time ;
but instead, to say that we can only interpret the process by making
the statement primarily and mainly in terms of domestic groups.
As it is the process, as such, of government which concerns
us here, I have not been introducing any material as to the nature
of the group interests that are in play, nor as to their origins. They
are, of course, the very material of society; their activities are to
be comprehended only with reference to one another; and the
intensity of their struggles, or the relative smoothness of their
adjustment, will always be capable of direct interpretation in terms
of what they actually are. In other words, where classes are very
nearly balanced against each other the outcome will be very dif-
ferent from what it is where one has a decided preponderance.
Great inequalities will bring still dififerent results.
If we should go back behind the governments in the range of
which I have been speaking to the simple tribal organizations, we
should find a group process going on inside the tribes, but not a
solidification of the groups into what I have called classes. We
should there find leadership and governmental organization cor-
responding to the needs of this functioning of the groups. Should
we advance to larger societies with compacted masses of people,
we should quickly find them divided into classes, and whether these
classes were castes, or land-holding aristocracies, or whatever, we
should find easily recognizable phenomena of class rule manifesting
themselves in the leadership and governmental institutions. The
political history of the Greek city-states, and the history of Egypt
and of Rome as well can only be interpreted if the classes are
brought into prominence. At every stage we find ourselves
tempted to say that the greater the intensity of the class oppositions,
the more certain there is to be found a strong leadership of the dom-
inant class called into existence to preserve the balance. If we
advance still farther to societies in which the classes, both locality
and other, arc found to be breaking down, and tlic process of freely
320
nil; PROCESS of government
changinj^ groups to !«■ upiKuring in their place, we find again a
change in the governing institutions. We may sometimes get
closer to leadership of the old tribal type, but always when the
grouj) divisions begin to solidify and class oppositions to appear,
we find stronger leadership called into existence for the work to be
done. At all stages in the process we find representation of inter-
ests, the government as such resting always on certain classes, or
alternatively on grouj)s of groups, and representing indirectly the
others. We find representation sometimes through single individuals,
and sometimes through large bodies, whose members have each their
own constituencies. We find the various operations of government
dilTerently distributed between different organs. But wherever and
whenever we study the process we never get away from the group
and class activities, and when we get these group activities properly
stated we come to see that the differences between governments are
not fundamental differences or differences of principle, but that they
are strictly differences of technique for the functioning of the in-
terests, that they are adopted because of group needs, and that they
will continue to be changed in accordance with group needs.
Except as a difference of technique is meant, itself directly
to be interpreted in terms of changed interest groups, there is no
abandonment of "absolute " power in England or the United States
today, even as compared with England in the reigns of William the
Conqueror or the Tudors. There was no "absolute" power then
any more than there is today. Both statements are true. The
EngUsh cabinet can today do things which the earlier sovereigns
would not have dreamed of doing, and the early sovereigns had
powers which the cabinet of today cannot exercise. The American
president can be invested with a most tremendous representative
force, or reduced to a nonenity, all within a year or two, and with-
out changing the "Constitution," merely according as the group
pressures work successfully through him or through other branches
of the government.
If I have indicated in this chapter why, and how, the comparison
of governments must be carried underneath the surface forms into
the group process, I have done aU I set out to do.
CHAPTER XIII
THE SEPARATION OF GOVERNMENTAL AGENCIES
It is common in America to say that there are three "powers"
of government, the legislative, executive, and judicial. This
manner of dividing them is incidental to our Constitution. For
reasons already made clear I shall not here use the word " powers."
It is too mystical. The word "agencies" much better expresses
the facts. We certainly find the three agencies named above in
American government, and in many other governments. But we
do not find them in all governments. They are not the only agen-
cies we find in American government. And finally, there is no
theory of powers that I know anything about that will serve to
define the actual work of these agencies — that is the actual agencies
— closer than a rough approximation.
In opposition to the threefold division of powers it is proper to
emphasize the unity of government, but only in the sense that all
government is one common process. It is hardly necessary here
to argue that all these agencies of governrhent are involved in one
common process, any more than to argue against the idea that
there is any unity in government other than that of process. The
preceding chapters have given the proof over and over again. It
is desirable, however, before taking up a consideration of the dif-
ferent agencies of government in detail to sketch roughly the facts
of their relations.
Any governmental process, no matter what, is an activity. It is
also group activity. Does the president of the United States put a
paragraph in his annual message urging legislation in regulation
of railroads ? It is a very different thing from the case of a private
citizen writing the identical words and putting them in a book or
from the- president writing them and locking them up in_his desk
without putting them in the message. It matters not how much
the paragraph is discussed in terms of the president's ego, the
321
322 THK I'ROCKSS OF GOVERx\MExNT
given fact is a lilllr, diltcrcntiated activity growing out of past
group activity, having all its reference and meaning in group activ-
ities and looking forward to more group activity. In other words,
it itself is group activity. "President Roosevelt" does not mean
to us, when we hear it, so much bone and blood, but a certain
number of millions of American citizens tending in certain direc-
tions. Tlie czar, the speaker, Campbell-Bannerman, Jean Jaur^,
the judges in their chambers, all are activity.
Confining ourselves now to government in the narrowest sense,
that is to the governing body, we find that that body, in other words
that specialized set of activities, can usually be separated into two
or more parts, according as different sets of persons take part in
them. This test, the difference of the sets of persons participating,
is at bottom the only fundamental test there is between different
functions or powers of government. It was by observations of
groups of men functioning officially, that Montesquieu prepared
himself for his discussion; and his analysis holds good there, and
there only, where men arc actually acting in groups which can
roughly be described by his three terms. Wliere men do not so
act, the analysis does not apply, and theory has no further word to
say.
If it were essential that the individuals making up these special
sets of activities should never participate in more than one set at
a time in order to justify a classification, no classification would
ever be made. The sets are not exclusive. And nevertheless
the whole classification depends upon the men in the groups, not
on any theoretical functions or powers. Such is the nature of the
social process. We find a cluster of men carrying out one line of
activity here, which we can contrast with another cluster carrying
out another line of activity there. Some of the activities of many
of the men in each cluster bring them into intimate association
with some of the men in the other cluster, so intimate that for many
purposes we cbssify activities as running across the combined
clusters. But this only means that the distinction between the
two great groups is the biggest one we can make, the distinction
on the biggest lines, the one which separates the groups of men
SEPARATION OF GOVERNMENTAL AGENCIES 323
most adequately. It means that it is an approximate division,
but the best approximation obtainable. Even when a theory of
powers is set up to go with each group, the theory itself breaks
down at a thousand places — as books on constitutional law, or,
better still, court opinions on cases involving the powers of officers,
will quickly show. It is groups of men that the judges tend to
follow, and only lines of reasoning so far as the reasoning adequately
reflects groups of men.
Taking now the actual groupings of men met with in the govern-
mental process, as the agencies of government, we find, as I have
already said, that it is necessary to make varying classifications of
the agencies in varying nations or societies. There are govern-
ments, with the three agencies, executive, legislative, and judicial,
well defined; there are governments that have the judiciary as a
subordinate branch of the executive, as is still to great extent the
case in France and Germany; there are governments that have
the executive and legislature consolidated, as in England. There
are governments in which a classification on such lines cannot
even be made "theoretically" without the greatest straining, as in
Russia, where a czar, a class council, and a bureaucracy may be
called the divisions of government, with a duma struggling to
co-ordinate itself with them. There are governments in which
political parties have organized themselves in such complexity
and power that they cannot well be treated otherwise than as a
fourth branch of government along with the other three, as today
in the United States. Again there is often a very real division of
activities between localities and between central and local govern-
ments, a division just as worthy the dignity of a theory of its own
as is the Montesquieu classification. Finally there is the division
of powers between numerous co-ordinate officials, all nominally
executive, as in American counties, but really as much entitled,
for many purposes, to separate classification as any governmental
activities. This list does not pretend to comprehend all the varie-
ties of divisions of powers we actually find, but only to show how the
most ])retentious of them all has a i)lacc merely as one among many.
324 rm; process of government
Sui)i)osc we take the case of a Greek tribe with its typical
organization of king, council of elders, and assembly of the people.
Certainly no one studying it would ever come to make a classifi-
cation of i)()wers into executive, legislative, and judicial. Aristotle's
deliberative, magisterial, and judicial elements were analyzed by
him in governments of a much later type, and at that they approxi-
mate only roughly to our modern classification. The differentia-
tion of the agencies of government in the tribe was on entirely
dilTirent lines. Nor can one drag such a standard of classification
into the facts with success. It is futile to say that custom repre-
sented present-day law, and was unchangeable, and that the govern-
ment was purely administrative. The government decided ques-
tions of policy, and plenty of its acts would be as hard to classify
as the typical ordinance of a modem American city council. As
for judicial and admmistrative acts, we find them passing through
the same groups of men by similar processes and with similarly
registered results. Evidently the agencies of government were
just king, elders, and assembly, and that is all that can be said
about it.
With the stratification of the population into classes, and with
the community growing in size, new groupings of governmental
activities will form, new agencies will appear. Often the army
must be put down as a special agency, and not subsumed under
any other. Sometimes perhaps the diplomatic work may seem
so important as to be allowed co-ordinate place. In a despotism
the actual division of labor is what counts. Under a feudal govern-
ment the feudal structure itself is the "distribution of powers."
In a league or confederacy the distribution is indicated by the very
name. And so with the rest.
Among continental writers, especially among Germans, one is
apt to find these agencies of government classified under three
divisions, which differ from the Alontesquieu classification in
essential things simply because the observation has been made
upon German governments and not upon England. We are told
of the ruling power, and the legislative, and administrative powders
— the "Rcgierung," the " gesctzgebcnde Gewalt," and the "voU-
SEPARATION OF GOVERNMENTAL AGENCIES 325
ziehende Gewalt," or " Verwaltung." Here the judiciary is
subsumed under the administrative branch, and the "Regierung"
is set apart as something very much greater and more magnificent
than the mere executive of our own constitution. You cannot
put these two classifications into opposition and say one is right
and the other wrong. It is all a question of the particular govern-
ment one is talking about, in other words of the actual activities,
the agencies as they present themselves to observation.
In England today it is surely artificial and inexact to make a
sharp distinction between executive and legislative functions.
Parliament devotes itself to administrative matters much of the
time. Not to speak of the budget which occupies the center of
the parliamentary stage and which is strictly administrative work
on a theoretical division of our customary kind, there is the con-
tinuous interpellation of the "government" on administrative
questions; and on such questions a ministry may even fall. The
cabinet is both the head of the administration and the initiating
force in legislation. The judiciary is a much more sharply sepa-
rated agency of government, despite its culmination in the House
of Lords, and despite the political character of one or two of the
highest judicial officers. But if we wish to divide the rest of the
government into distinct agencies we must do it by naming the
electorate, the House of Lords, the House of Commons as organized
in parties, the cabinet, and possibly in addition the civil service.
In the United States we certainly find executive, legislative,
and judicial agencies. They are set up with walls built between
them, each taking up its work at a certain stage, using certain
methods, and continuing its work to a certain further stage, and
each entering into formal relations with the others only at specified
points. Actually the interactions occur at many presumably for-
bidden points because the same groups of pressures are working
through all of them and seeking always to find their smoothest
courses, wherever they may flow. But in addition to these agencies
we find others. First, there is the constitutional convention, which
we have developed into a regular instrument of government in
frequent service.' Then there arc the organized political parlies,
326 iiii: i'ROCi':ss of government
which V\v outsidf llu- personnel of any one of the three branches .
named in the Constitution, but which are just as definite portions of
the governmental structure as are executive, judiciary, and legis-
lature. The question as to whether the parties shall be regarded
as a special agency of government indicates clearly the nature of
the tests that are needed. If the party is a fugitive thing, showing
itself inside the legiskiture, we can hardly make of it a separate
agency. Even if strongly organized with its main strength in the
legislature we shall not make of it a separate agency. But if it is
strongly organized outside the legislature, if it has its own leader-
ship aj)art from the leadership of the legislature in which its leaders
may j)erhaps not even be members, then we shall for many purposes
find ourselves literally forced to regard it as a separate agency;
and we shall be justified in this to the extent, and to the extent only,
that it is a consolidated organized body. Again, the electorate
itself is sometimes seen to function separately as a dififerentiated
activity in so marked a manner that for some purposes it is proper
to add it as another distinct agency of government. Constitutional
conventions, executive, legislature, judiciary, parties, and suffrage
are all on the list of agencies in America ; and at that the six words
by no means adequately set forth the extent of the differentiation.
For practical purposes probably the best test as to the agencies
of government is to be found in the method of control by the
people. " People " is a word not lightly to be used, but here I may
employ it perhaps without confusion, by w^ay of shortening the
statement. Wlierever we find a separately organized responsibility
we may name the agency a separate one. In an old New England
to\\Tiship with its horde of petty officials, each one was really a
separate power or agency of government. In a nation in which,
by current modes of speech, the monarch is "sovereign," and the
popular assembly is a comparatively unimportant body, we find
the organization for the control of the monarch to rest mainly in
occasional revolution, and to be different from the organization for
control of the popular assembly, which will be by ballot. In
England there is no different control over the executive from what
there is over the legislative work. The control is a control of parlia- ^
mcnt by people, of cabinet by parliament, or somethnes better by ^
SEPARATION OF GOVERNMENTAL AGENCIES
6^1
people direct, and of judges by process of appointment and im-
peachment. In the American government judges, executive, and
legislators are controlled by separate elections, or by separate
forms of appointment and removal, while parties have been, as
Professor Goodnow has shown, subject Jta^yeryimpeilfect control^
and consequently the centers of a disturbing energy, which is only
now commencing to be subjected to the popular check. So far as
parties have controlled executive, legislature, and judiciary in one
consolidated process, the effect has been to break down to some
extent the constitutional separation.
There is one method of classifying the "powers" of government
which seems definitively to abandon the observed groups of func-
tionaries and to set up a line of distinction concerning "functions"
which do not rest directly on corresponding "organs," but instead
cut across the organs. This is the distinction between the expres-
sion of the will of the state and the execution of the will, as it is set
up, for example, by Professor Goodnow in his Politics atid Admin-
istration. Here the judiciary becomes part of the executing func-
tion. The executive as we actually find it is admitted to have many
expressing functions, and the legislature as we find it to have many
executing functions. But the two kinds of functions are neverthe-
less held to be clearly distinguishable and adequate as a foundation
for the theory of the governmental process.
Such a test too readily accepts a distinction of individual psy-
chology as a standard for classification. The " will " and the " act "
are taken from their use with reference to the individual and apphed
to the state, where, indeed, we are often told that they appear
in more distinct forms than they do in the individual life. But a
closer look at the facts would discourage this mode of treatment.
To take an illustration once more from the immediate political life
of the day in this country, there is President Roosevelt's activity
with reference to the western coal lands. Some of these lands have
been fraudulently secured from the government and the ownership
of much of the coal property, whether rightful or fraudulent, has
been grossly abused. The President has therefore withdrawn
328 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
thr remaining coal lands from entry, he has taken steps to secure
the cancellation of the fraudulent entries, and he has prepared plans
for a lease instead of a sale system for the disposition of the land.
Retaining the term "will" as used in the mode of classification
under consideration, is this activity of the President's an expression
or an execution of the social will ? It would take the most refined
casuistry to answer. Expression here is execution, and execution
is expression. Casuistry is of no service. We have facts to vi^atch
and our business is to interpret those facts by getting them into
relation witli other facts, but a distinction between expression and
execution of will does not answer.
Moreover, the very use of the term "will" is an admission of
superficial treatment. It is society with which we are dealing and
notliing else. The social will then is synonymous with society
itself. If we are to make progress in study it must be by analysis
of the society, not by duplicating its existence under the name will.
We find the social activity moving through various stages. We find
interest groups, and these reflected by political groups, and these
organized in parties, and all working through the other agencies of
government, now placing a statute on the books, now rushing a
malefactor up for trial, now declaring the validity or invalidity of
this immediately expressed "will" (the statute) in terms of a
broader "will" (the Constitution); but always and everywhere
there is action and always and everywhere there is a meaning to
the action; never is the meaning found apart from the action,
never the action apart from the meaning. So the distinction
bctw'cen expression and execution w^ill be of value just so far as we
can find definite groups of activities differentiated from others. It
is by actual representative activities, not by an abstract distinction
between expression and execution of "will," that we must group
our material and aid our investigation.
One question remains. What of the theories of the separation
of the powers as we actually find these theories functioning in
society? Do they or do they not guide the organization of the
government ? This is merely a new form of an old question we
SEPARATION OF GOVERNMENTAL AGENCIES 329
have repeatedly discussed before. Our "theories," whether they
appear in all the arrogance of purity at constitutional conventions
or whether they present themselves garbed in the subtleties of the
law courts, arc always aids in the actual process of arranging and
rearranging the shape of the governmental agencies. They are
of aid just so far as they reflect correctly the given grouping and
permit unassigned activities to take easy running positions in one
or other agency. They serve as a sort of practical shorthand on
the borderland to aid us in the quick application of one or the other
agency to a new piece of work, in proportion to its fitness for the
task. They do not guarantee fitness. They do not create the
agencies. They only serve to help the assignment and they always
stand ready to slink into obscurity the moment it appears that
they have not properly reflected the facts of the developing situation.
Later on it will be shown more completely how this process works
in similar cases in other fields.
CHAPTER XIV
TlIE PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE EXECUTIVE
In this and the three succeeding chapters (to which the first
part of cliaj). xviii may also be joined) I propose to follow the work-
ings of interest groups through the various agencies of government.
From what has been said in the preceding chapter it will be clear
enough that the division of the discussion into the sections indicated
by the chapter titles is made for convenience, that it does not claim
more than an approximate correspondence to the various phases of
the complex governmental process, and that it rests not upon
hypothetical functions of government, but upon the actual separa-
tion of governmental agencies, each agency being accountable to
" the governed " or to some other agency of the government through
a special technical process in greater or less degree peculiar to itself.
It should also be clear that these agencies are not all found coexist-
ing in all societies, nor even in the majority of societies, and that
there are some societies in which none of the terms correctly desig-
nate any of the existing agencies. It is purely for convenience in
treatment that this division is used here, the convenience arising
from the fact that the societies to which most attention will be given
have agencies in general in these forms. The order in which
the chapters occur is also a matter of convenience in treatment.*
Before taking up the executive, even in the form in which it
unites the whole governmental process in one agency, a few para-
graphs may be given to societies to which the term executive will
even less accurately apply. Suppose we take a society in which
» In the historical illustrations in these chapters I hope no substantial errors
of fact have crept in. I wish, however, to say frankly thkt I am writing without
detailed verification, and with no pretense of ha\'ing made such exact studies as
would justily me in speaking positively of the strength of the various group pres-
sures which in each instance have been in play. In the. interpretation of any
particular bit of history such exact study is, of course, an absolutely essential pre-
330
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IX THE EXECUTIVE 331
the interest groups are comparatively few, comparatively simple,
and comparatively well adjusted. Within our range of observa-
tion such a society must be a small one living under conditions
which, when stated as environment, must also be simple. Suppose
it be a Homeric Greek tribe, or an Iroquois tribe in the stage
described by Morgan. The government will deal with local peace
and order, with some economic questions such as the distribution
of crop land, the harvest, and the taking of wild animals or fruits,
and finally with war expeditions. Many of these group opposi-
tions will, in part at least, be well adjusted through religion or
otherwise without passing through the process of the differentiated
governing body itself. So far as they pass through the differen-
tiated government they come much closer to adjustment through
the process called reasoning than would be probable in more
complicated societies. In other words, we have it as an observable
fact that the most intense interest will be that of the whole tribe in
opposition to some outer tribe, while the intra-society groupings
will have less intensity and will consequently subordinate them-
selves and adjust themselves by argument.
The king, elders, and populace arrangement is typical here, and
it makes little difference whether the civil and military chieftain-
ships are separate or combined, or just what measures for the
selection of the chief are used. Even if the chief is hereditary in
some degree, he will be under close popular control. Similarly, it
is a matter of detail as to just how the ciders are chosen, whether
they are heads of families, clan representatives, selected old men,
or what. We find the lines of activity formulating themselves
freely throughout the society, and moving freely along their full
course. The elders formulate a proposal and submit it to the
requisite. Here, however, I am not attempting to throw light on historical occur-
rence, but to use such rough knowledge of history as we have to throw light on
the group method of interpretation. The group method is for its part only of
value so far as it can be used in specific interpretations. But we must proceed
step by step, and I am only taking one short step here. If there is any of the
material of the governmental process which is not capable of statement by the
method I propose, then I am open to serious criticism, but not if I have merely
made errors of fact in illustration.
332 I 111': I'ROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
assembly of tin- inojJr. But as they formulate it, they both take
account of the whole complex situation as they reflect it "for" the
|HO[)!c, and of the po[)ular reflection of the situation, that is of the
public ojjinion, as it {>ercolates in to them. Neither they, nor the
chief, are at any stage of this process intrusted with full representa-
tive discretion. The popular approval, by applause or otherwise,
is a great part of the process. When the activity proceeds farther,
say into warlike expedition, the point of view of an epic poet may
give the chief the appearance of great arbitrary power, and may
reduce the populace to the semblance of a mere echo; but even
then the chief is only expressing his following in a very immediate
way. He is only filling in little details of their activity by his own
commands. I am tempted to call this kind of a government very
highly developed in contrast with our great modem states, but
such a way of putting it would easily give a false impression, and,
moreover, it is a type of judgment which one should be most cautious
in making. It is, of course, not true in the sense of complexity;
but given the existing range of interests in the societies that have it,
it expresses them with the greatest facility. There is enough
structure to prevent confusion at each stage of the developing
activity, but at no stage is the structure able to misrepresent large
elements in the society or to block the activity. For the develop-
ment and perpetuation of such a government there is necessary
not merely the simplicity of the interest groupings, but perhaps
also freedom for the splitting of the society in two, and for the
emigration of one part to an independent neighborhood.
For a very different type of government in the tribe we may
turn to the kinglet of tropical Africa, with all his ferocious brutality
and established terrorism. The group conditions are of course
in reality very different from what they are in the tribes we have
just discussed. It is not my province here to go into them, but such
factors as food supply, the amount of labor needed to supply daily
wants, surplus energy, thickness of the population, and available
slave markets all enter into the account. These groupings have
ended by adjusting themselves very crudely through a form of abso-
lutism, in which copious blood-letting is the technique both for the
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE EXECUTIVE 333
control of the people by the petty despot and for the control of the
despot by the people. Order is maintained by terrorism which
sometimes takes the form of random arbitrary killings conducted
by the kinglet himself. The means for approach to him are very
imperfect, and the decisions of the kinglet, while reflecting group
interests, do so in no steady balanced way, but by rough and irregu-
lar approximations. A circle of lordlings around the kinglet serves
not to modify his vagaries, but to terminate them by assassination
and by the substitution of a new ruler in extremity. The whole
system is hedged in by a thick growth of religious rites and cere-
monial, that is by a habitual activity little flexible and reflecting
crudely the great mysteries of the tropic environment, which is
seemingly arbitrary and violent in its treatment of the natives
beyond the arbitrariness of any but the wildest of kinglets. Should
anyone be inclined to attribute the ferocity of such government to
some inborn characteristic of the people, I have but to remind him
of the many well-adjusted governments to be found among Ameri-
can Indian tribes, whose members could always show the most
extreme cruelty to prisoners of war under certain circumstances,
but who did not use cruelty imder any circumstance as technique
of government. If the typical African kinglet government is to
be contrasted with the typical tribe as previously described it may
be by pointing out that the agencies of government have now been
reduced to a single one, the kinglet, so far as ordinary activity goes,
while the group of assassinators steps in on rare occasions to play a
part which we may compare with a constitutional convention, and
the populace rarely or never appears in any organized form. It is a
government which is controlled by elimination of the ruler, not by
altering the policies of a continuing ruler, and in which the tech-
nical means used by all parties is blood-lciting.
We have had in none of these cases any proper distinction
between executive, legislative, and judicial agencies. We have had
real agencies, and the whole social governmental process working
in stages through them; but only an arbitrary application of the
three "powers" or functions is possible, and that is undesirable
and far from being helpful.
3.vt llli; I'KOCESS OF GOVERNMENT
If now vvf pass to a gnat nation like China we shall find the
aRcncics of government distributed on territorial lines, and if wc
tn at the emperor as an executive it can only be as an executive who
(1(HS the work at the- central seat of government which executive,
judiciary, and legislature together do in other governments. Under
the i)rovincial viceroys an "intellectual" bureaucracy holds ofl&ce.
Some years ago wc had an interesting illustration of the way the
interest groupings of the empire pass through a monarch of this char-
acter. The young emperor became infected with reform ideas,
as current speech has it. In other words, a certain interest grouping
in the enijjire secured its reflection through him. This did not come
about through any organized mechanism, but through agencies
which in contrast to organization would be called accidental. The
reform group gained the emperor's ear. That group was itself
highly representative, that is involving at long range groups that
were reflected through it in several degrees. Being far enough
away from practical life, it posed mainly as an idea activity. But
as soon as the emperor proceeded with his activity along the new
lines, he was put aside and the empress dowager, representing the
old arrangement of dominant interests, reigned in his place. The
viceroys were behind the empress dowager. But the interest
groupings in China are rapidly changing with the development of
Japan, the defeat of Russia, and the alignment of the other powers,
and the central authority is reflecting them with the result that
what some of us call progress, and what others call a menace, is
reix)rted. We have, therefore, in this despotism anything but
arbitrary rule. We see a practical setting-aside of the ruler and
his partial restoration, and know that the process can be described
only in terms of the rearrangement of the interest groups of the
empire. This is not to say that a supernatural photograph of the
groupings could be taken, and that the emperor would be found
exactly reflecting the balance of pressures, but merely that channels
exist by which the interests may work themselves through him
with more or less of accuracy, not merely as his own observa-
tion makes them clear to him, but as they can state themselves to
him. We know that should activity on the propaganda level push
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE EXECUTIVE 335
itself through to some degree which conflicted with the groupings of
the time on lower leveb, the decree would remain " in the air" and
it would not adequately state the lines along which the government
would continue to work.
Turn next to Russia. We find in it today nothing but a monster
spectacle of the conflict of the interest groups.' Once upon a time
the czar represented the rest of the population against the Boyars.
More recently, his policy has often been dominated by the huge
land-holding interests of the empire. When the serfs were liberated
he swung far to the opposite extreme under the influence of a clique
of St. Petersburg bureaucrats who in effect represented the peasants
in the process. Thereby he mortally oft'cnded the land-holding
nobility, which had been strongly addicted to "liberalism" on lines
that would not have been so hurtful to their own interests but that
nevertheless, they thought, would have successfully staved off the
threatened peasants' uprising. Since then, measure after measure
for the relief of the land -holders has become necessary. Twenty
years ago began the rise of a great mercantile and industrial interest,
typified by Witte's policies. Along with it there appeared on the
scene the laboring proletariat of the cities. The expanded empire
and its great internal works have made the burden of taxation
heavier and heavier. The existing technique of the government,
maintained by class pressures, has not allowed ways of relief to be
found. The Jew has thriven somewhat better than the Russian
under such conditions. The peasants' wild cry for land, the
socialism of the working-men, and all the revolutionary movements
with all their riots of theories and of bombs, have appeared to
express these sujggressed groupings of the poj)ulation.
Under these circumstances we have today a government which
' For the groups and classes involved in recent Russian history one may con-
suit Maxime Kovalewsky, Revue inter nationale de socivlogie, Vol. XI, pp. 476 ff. ;
also A. Aladin, London Times, January 16, 1907. The party alignments in the
dumas are also of service. In Paul Milyoukov's Russia and Its Crisis the various
dominant and dangerous interest groups can be discovered underneath his super-
ficial, propagandist statement in terms of ideas. It is a task not without its amus-
ing phases to pick them out and note how they often give the lie direct to the
various "isms" which are put forth by the author as the true Russian realities.
336 rilK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
is not by any mi-ans one of a single class, but instead, a government
in which many groups are forced into marked class oppositions
because of the wretchedly poor mediation which the czar is giving
them. The czar is primarily mediator for the provinces of the great
scattered empire. Backed by his huge army, he holds them together
against (langcrs''of attack and dissolution. The bureaucracy is itself
a great interest group in the empire, similar in many striking
respects to the political machines in the United States, as in the
free access to it, in its technique of corruption, even in the cross-
reLition of locality group and other group functions.
/ Every act of the czar and of the bureaucracy is an expression of
Bome of these groups. We see the large industrial and commercial
/interests solidly behind the autocracy because their technique of
corruption is in good working order. We see the rising manu-
facturing and mercantile interests arrayed on the other side because
they are at a disadvantage in this technique. We see the prole-
tariat at the extreme radical stage because they have so little repre-
sentation in the government that almost any change will for them,
they judge, be a change for the better. Similarly with the land
groups. The peasants are divided according to their economic
position. So far as the large land-holders feel that they can
preserve their interests better through a constitution, just so far
they are for it — as has actually been instanced in earlier Russian
history. But the moment the present revolutionary movement
takes a phase w'hich tends toward the partition of their lands, that
moment they line up solidly behind the autocracy.
So complicated is this struggle that it is natural for keenly
interested observers of it to state it, entirely in terms of the various
" ideas," liberal, socialist, and so on, that are prominent in the talk.
But these "ideas" can with sufl&cient care all be reduced to mere
discussion phases of the process. Political parties have formed
on the basis of interest groups always to be defined, of course, in
terms of each other. During the preparations for the first duma
we watched great masses of the population adjust themselves in
new groupings on the party level; that is, the shifting situation made
them transfer then- efforts at political expression from one political
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE EXECUTIVE 337
group to another. The history of the Constitutional Democratic
party, for example, or of any other, could be written in such terms.
The autocracy is the center of the struggle, but only the center,
inasmuch as it has proved an inadequate instrument for the expres-
sion of the changing group interests. Place a duma with sub-
stantial powers alongside the czar, or otherwise alter the agencies
for the expression of the interests of the nation, and the struggle will
continue through the new agency, perhaps reduced in violence,
perhaps increased in violence, and it will then be a struggle not
only of class against class, and subclass perhaps against subclass,
but also a struggle of territorial divisions of the huge empire against
each other. The classes cannot fly apart ; the territories can, and
possibly will. The classes must remain to adjust their interests
and evolve, if fortune is such, into less antagonistic groups. Per-
haps they can achieve it through the agency of such an institution
as the duma, and perhaps they will require a new despotism, this
time representing some other element than the land-holding class
most directly. Out of it all, after time has passed and after more
blood has flowed, will come a better-balanced governmental struc-
ture, with better channels for the adjustment of interest-group
conflicts before they proceed to the most extreme hates and to
murder as technique. Let the czar and his class suppress the revo-
lution, and they have but two alternatives, either devastation and
the reduction of the population to smaller numbers, or else a sub-
stantial yielding of much of what has been demanded. ,0r, in
other words, through revolution, even though formally unsuccessful
the interest groups will have made themselves heard. Just this
latter process has, as is well known, played a great part in the
history of English liberties.
In contrast to Russia we may examine, in the case of the Greek
tyrannies, governments centralized in a single individual in which
the class basis of the autocratic rule is simple and easy to analyze.
There are plenty of incidents of the tyrannies, such as that of
Theagenes of Megara, who slew the cattle of the rich that were
encroaching on common land, which show where the tyrants'
strength rested. To describe the tyranny as unscrupulous ambition
338 1 1 IK I'KOCESS OF GOVERNMENT
is lliin and meaningless, comijared with a description of the work
the tyriinnics did, of the work they appeared to do. Their task
was to overthrow the oligarchies, which must not be understood
to mean merely to change the form of the government, but to set
aside in the spcxilic case a rule which had ceased to express a large
and strong grouping of the population, and which did not give
tliat grouping any channels through which to make itself felt.
Here was need, not for some formally analyzed functions of govern-
ment to be separately performed, but for a mighty group interest
to push itself through to better expression in the face of obstacles;
lience the tyranny, a single agency, without any distribution of the
governmental activity through a number of different agencies.
Wlien the work of the tyranny was finished, then the interest group-
ings arranged their governing bodies anew, providing a number
of agencies through which their activities might pass at different
stages. And these kept on changing in more or less ready response
to the changing of the groupings.
In Rome all the way from traditional kings to latest emperors
we find the character of the executive strictly dependent on the
kind of work to be done at each period, that kind of work itself
being capable of adequate statement only in terms of group pres-
sures, with the executive as group leader. The kings come upon
our vision as elective rulers, and though wt lack the material for
their earlier interpretation, they were primarily war leaders of all
Rome against neighboring communities. In time, consuls, who
retained most of the royal power, succeeded them as the very clear
result of group reaction against king evils, under circumstances
in which the group reaction could take place without injury to the
reacting group. The consuls were primarily patrician leaders
against the plebs, more so than the kings had been. When all
Rome had to react against surrounding communities under specially
perilous conditions, the king was temporarily restored under the
guise of a dictator. The struggle against the curule magistrates
in the early republic was strictly a class phenomenon, and the out-
come dei)ended strictly on the given balance of pressures. When
the tribunes were created they were class leaders and had just the
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE EXECUTIVE 339
strength of the plebs behind them and nothing more. One can
even trace group interests to some extent within the ranks of the
patricians and within the ranks of the plebs.
Wlien we come to the Roman emperors we have again full
material for interpretation in terms of interest groups, only this
time locality groupings on a huge scale were what counted. The
provinces were being brutally abused by the richer classes of Rome
and the poorer classes were systematically bribed into assent. The
provinces were held quiet by the legions, but the legions were made
up of provincials. Caesar had a devoted army of provincials
behind him. The very moment that imperial authority was estab-
lished, the provinces were more humanely treated. The emperors
were the direct representatives of the provinces and their appear-
ance marked a great advance in the adjustment of interests within
the government. The ordinary description even of a Nero in
terms of morals and personal character is a pitiable caricature.
Nero was beloved throughout the provinces and there was good
reason for it. The army was a sort of electoral commission, never
a very perfect one, and, when the praetorian guard was in control,
a most wretched one, but always it had a value in the government.
The whole development of the administrative system and the
bureaucracy, the division of the empire under Diocletian, and
indeed almost every stage in every imperial career, must be inter-
preted, not so far as its trivialities and sensationalisms go, but in
all its main outlines, in terms of the existing group pressures of the
empire.
I am no more here than elsewhere in this volume making an
attempt to cover systematically the field of government, and I
therefore offer no excuse for skipping from one type of government
to another and omitting many. Suppose we take a look at Ger-
many as it is now organized. The executive^that is. the emperor,
is so very much more than mere executive that that word but
scantily describes him. One needs a term nearer to ruler, to
comprise all his work. His initiative in the matters that pass
through the Reichstag is so great that tliat popularly elected body
340
'Illl': I'ROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
Inconns litlle more than a vcloing agency, and indeed often it
cannot veto when it would, but must merely protest. Both under
Bismar(k and under Wilhelm II the j^rogress of socialist legisla-
tion, whether adopting socialistic i)rojects or in antagonism to
organized socialism, clearly shows the group process at work. It
matters not that the emperor's brain lays claim to certain policies
or i)rogrammes. Getting down underneath, what is happening
is that certain of the groupings of the empire, including prommently
the old consolidated agrarian class and the new "big business,"
are being reflected directly by the emperor as agency of govern-
ment. The test upon which the fate of the present system of
government will turn is whether the emperor reflects the strongest
of the nation's interest groups well enough so that they will not
push through to better agencies of expressing themselves. This does
not mean of course that he must express them along the level of
the talk groups in which they combine, nor that he must follow
anybody's idea of what is ideally or "objectively" best for them,
but that he must express the deeper-lying interest groups which
function through the talk at one stage of their process, and which
also function through him. So long as they find their way through
to the later stages of activity with some approximation to their
intensity in its ratio to the resistance they must face, so long the
emperor as head of legislation w'ill stand, and the Reichstag will
remain in its relative feebleness. When the time comes, as it no
doubt will come, that this emperor or some successor, is too poor a
representative of the more powerful groups, then he must give way,
and if he is too strongly identified with one class, he must see an
agency expressly representing other groups of the population
placed alongside of him, and perhaps ultimately he must be him-
self dispensed with or relegated to a trivial position in the govern-
mental system. This process can be described in terms of royal
personalities with a very vague approximation to the truth ; it can
be described in terms of theories and political platforms w4th
somewhat greater approximation; but the royalties, and the
theories, and the Reichstag, and all officialdom as well, will have
to be reduced to terms of the underlying interest groupings, to get
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE EXECUTIVE 341
a statement that will really stand the tests as an account of the
phenomena of the government. The whole well-known process
by which the propagandist socialism in Germany tends to trans-
form itself into a working legislative policy with the increase of the
party in strength is a proof of an increasing representativeness in
the propaganda activity. The underlying interests are coming to
be better expressed in the policies and in the differentiated govern-
ing bodies at one and the same time.
In France the changes in the form of the government during
the last century have been the direct consequence of the process
of adjustment of the interest groups. French character will not
serve to explain it, neither will the characters of the various
rulers and chief officials. It has been always a question of the
identification of the head of the government with some group of
the people, a question of the less ample opportunities for function-
ing through the government allowed to other groups, and a question
of the effort of these others to secure expression. The war with
Prussia brought on the downfall of the last empire, but the war
itself was in large part the outgrowth of the direct group conflicts in
France. We must of course avoid being sensational in describing
these changes of government, for they can easily be made to appear
more important than they actually were. Moreover, we must not
think to explain every detail of a shifting situation whose adjust-
ment is in process of establishment as directly due to certain large
groups as we define them for broad purposes. Many points which
are most prominent in a "story" of what occurred are trivial to an
understanding of the process. Such for example is often the per-
sonality of a ruler. A ruler may identify himself with some friv-
olity groupings of the population to the neglect of the groupings
that are most strenuous in forcing their activity through its full
course. He will disappear, but his fate will be a mere detail. Only
when he has been identified with a strong clement in the population,
and his disappearance involves a material change in balance and
notably new methods of adjusting interests, will the event be one
of high importance.
The history of Napoleon, as indeed the whole history of the
342 rili; I'KOCESS OF GOVERNMENT
I'Vtnch Revolution, is such a story of the struggling of groups, there
solidilk'd into classes, for expression through the government,
comi)licated, of course, by the backing which foreign armies gave
to certain of the French classes. The French government today
is just such a process of adjusting interests, only now the interests
are in less violent antagonism, and the conditions admit of greater
llexibility. One might compare Napoleon with the present French
cabinet, the former as a strong man lifting a huge weight, the latter
as a team of jugglers keeping a lot of balls in the air at once. The
interests are now more minutely divided; no one has so great a
dead weight ; there is a more elaborate organization for giving them
pathways through the government. If a lot of them combine to
turn out the personnel of the cabinet, they will not stay combined for
action on a radical programme disadvantageous to the whole oppo-
sition group of interests. We have therefore many freely function-
ing groups, together with but little activity of the older, more
sharply consolidated classes, and so less resort to violence in the
government. The anti-clerical programme has been carried along
year after year by a government resting on "blocs" of different
composition, but without involving equally radical action on other
lines at the same time.
When the president of France summons a new premier — and
the same is true when a premier is summoned in England, or, with
appropriate modifications, when a presidential candidate is selected
in the United States — the process is very clearly one of group
adjustments. We may talk about it in terms of the quaUtics of the
man, but we do not have to dig deep to see that it is always a ques-
tion of his "strength," whether in the parliament or before the
electorate, and this is a question of the group support he can array
behind him. The process is easy to study in the press dispatches
whenever a new premier is selected in France; that happens so
often that one has not forgotten the old groupings before the chance
to observe the new arrives.
The history of English royalty is a history of class or group
struggles and would furnish countless illustrations, both to show
how the interest groups of the country worked through the govern-
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE EXECUTIVE 343
ment, and how they served, when checked, to cast up structures
for a changed type of government. The political history of Eng-
land may be written in terms of her insular isolation, which has
been a most important factor in the actual group formations of the
country at every stage, and of her classes with their later develop-
ment into freer groups, so far as that process has yet gone. The
alliance of the monarchy, sometimes with factions of the feudal land-
holders, sometimes with all of them, sometimes with the cities, and
so down through the list, is the very essence of the monarchy itseK.
The forms of governing institutions that have been developed, even
down to the forms of judicial procedure, all have their roots in these
class and group oppositions. From De Lolmc's time down, it has
often been remarked that the explanation of England's liberties is
to be found in the absolute power of her early kings, and this sweep-
ing statement can readily be given its truer meaning in terms of
the group oppositions that gave substance to that "absolute " power,
and that evolved farther in and through it. The whole develop-
ment is so manifest that I will not give it detailed discussion here.
The executive agency in England today is the cabinet, or per-
haps rather an inner circle of the cabinet. But this inner circle is
at the same time the legislative agency for the most important
changes in the law, the House of Lords holding a limited, and the
House of Commons an absolute veto on it, subject to appeal to the
electorate. It will be more convenient to discuss the play of the
interest groups through the English go\'crnment in the next chap-
ter, and the discussion will therefore be passed for the present, in
order that I may proceed to a more elaborate analysis of the play of
interests through and upon the executive in the United States.
The executive agency in the United States government is the
president with his department heads and their subordinates; in
the states it is the governor and his co-ordinate elective officials;
in the counties, usually a number of co-ordinate officials; in the
cities, a mayor with his department heads and their subordinates.
How the president through his veto power, through his ordinance
power, through his leadership of popuLir movements functions
344 'rm: i'kocess of government
as a j)art of tin- law-making system is well enough known. How
the Congress shares in the administrative work of the country by
organizing the departments, by a])i)ortioning funds to them, by
ordering investigations, and by controlling appointments and the
conduct of api)ointecs, is well enough known also. But my busi-
ness here is not with these classifications of function, but with the
play of interests through the presidency in all its functions, and
incidentally with the play of interests through the minor executive
agencies in the states and cities.
The creation of a presidency, senate, and lower house was a
mere extension of a set of institutions familiar enough in England
and in the colonies, though a mass of theory grew up around the
organization, much like superstitions around a peasant's harvest
fiekl, to the effect that the Senate was to adjust certain supposed
difTerenccs of interest between big and little states and also to repre-
sent cautious proprietorship of property, that the House was to
represent the '* people, "and that the president was to give unity to the
united colonies as against the outer world, serve as a check on the
Congress, and execute the laws. The early presidents corresponded
with the theory groupings fairly well, since no more pressing inter-
ests on deeper levels bore in upon them; and they confined their
activities within close limits, holding their veto power in strict leash,
keeping usually at long distance from Congress, and even refrain-
ing from active control of their own subordinates. In case of need,
however, they acted as fully authorized representatives of the
nation, as appeared especially in Jefferson's purchase of Louisiana.
But despite all this it was impossible even for Washington to
keep from becoming identified to a considerable extent with certain
elements or combinations of elements of the population, and almost
from the start presidents were party candidates and party repre-
sentatives, all of the technique of the Constitution's electoral system
notwithstanding. The necessary unity for successful represen-
tation of this kind was found first in the congressional caucus and
later in the party conventions.
The history of the presidency from that day to this has been
the history of the interests which chose it as their best medium of
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE EXECUTIVE 345
expression when they found other pathways blocked. Without
attempting further analysis, it is only necessary to refer to the com-
bination of groups which in the party of Andrew Jackson gained
power and through its leader used the presidency in a most aggres-
sive fashion, both by initiating legislation and through the veto
power; to the weakness of the presidency in the later days of the
slavery struggle before the Civil War when the great class interests
that developed were closely balanced in Congress; to the test of
the Civil War which made the presidency a dictatorship under
republican forms, and evolved the doctrine of the war powers ; to
the use of the presidency as the platter on which spoils were served
when the lack of other vital issues allowed the interest of the organ-
ized pohtical machines to dominate; to the identification of the
presidency under McKinley with the most powerful faction of the
Senate, representing the successful exploitation of the nation's
industrial opportunities; and finally to the use of the presidency
under Roosevelt to beat down the entrenchments of this same ruling
clique, not only in the Senate, but in the House, and to a degree in
the judiciary as well.
Let us observe in some typical matters how the presidency has
worked under Roosevelt. The background may be briefly sketched
at its high points, for it is familiar to everyone, but at the same
time is sd essential to an understanding of what the activity of the
presidency has been that it will not do merely to take acquaintance
with it for granted. It included: a system of court precedents
built up while industrial enterprise was seeking to use its oppor-
timities, while the use of those opportunities was not bringing
notable immediate harm to any kirge groups of the people, and
while there was in consequence little resistance to the tendency of
the decisions; a population at last become thick enough to limit
the opportunities for new enterprises and make them the subject
of hot competition, so that their free exploitation came to be felt as
injurious by large parts of the population who could not seize upon
any for themselves ; a Senate closely organized by a powerful party
dominated by the opportunity-seekers, ravenous to create oppor-
346 rilK I'ROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
lunilifs whcrcvLT they were n strained ; a House centralized under
the control of a speaker and two lieutenants, rarely breaking out of
the leading-strings except in minor matters, and representing in
general the same interests as the Senate; a powerful party organi-
zation, apparently at the height of its power, but actually materially
weakened by the civil-service laws which had withdrawn from it
much of its daily food, and so many of its sure workers and voters;
a great mass of the population f eehng its hurts, but as yet little clear
as to the what or the how of revenge and protection, cut off from
efTective representation in the government, driven therefore to
"radicalism," but neither desperate enough as yet to rush blindly
forward against the government, nor sure enough of its ground
to force a peaceable way. This statement of the situation is very
superficial, inasmuch as it makes use of many w'ords which involve
problems instead of giving reliable information in group terms, but
it will do for the purpose for which I put it forward — a mere indi-
cation and reminder of the background of group activity in w^hich
the presidency has been functioning.
By the chance, then, of an assassin's bullet — chance, of course,
only from the point of view of our immediate examination, and of
its immediate moment in time — a president came to power identi-
fied not at all with what popular analysis nowadays calls the
"system," nor on the other hand with the noisy protest against the
"system," but at the same time on a deeper-lying level, identified,
through whatever personal history, with the great interest groups
not effectively represented in the existing government; a man fit
for maintaining himself in popular leadership, in executive admin-
istration, and in poUtical manipulation as well. The bullet made a
ditlerence of a few years in the arrival of such a leader in power,
perhaps also in the particular person who secured this power, and,
mainly because of the earlier date of accession, it made a diflfer-
cnce also in the particular methods w-hich have been taken to
bring the interests in question to expression. So far as one can
see, it will make little difference in the concrete outcome, or even
in the great stages of political process.
Roosevelt went into office with known sympathy for the move-
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE EXECUTIVE 347
ment for tariff reform. He also pledged himself to carry out the
policies of his predecessor, who had just been testing the country
with reference to one phase of tariff reform — reciprocity — and
identifying himself with the movement for it, so far as a leader of
that type ever identifies himself openly with anything. Moreover
public attention was strongly centered (in other words, an active
talk group could be observed which was centered) upon the opera-
tions of one or two of the great industries of the country then in
process of consolidation, which were among the most prominent
direct beneficiaries of the tariff.
Taking all the conditions, it would have been natural to expect
that the tariff movement would have found a leader in Roosevelt,
and have made a strong struggle through this aid, which, of course,
is just what has not happened up to date. And the reason for this
is exceedingly simple. It is not that Roosevelt "betrayed" the
cause nor that he sacrificed it to the " trusts," but that under pres-
ent conditions, despite all superficial appearances, there is not an
intense enough and extensive enough set of interest groups back of
the movement to make a good fight for thoroughgoing reform with
reasonable prospects of success. I say this is the reason, but I do
not make any pretense of having worked out this problem in terms
of the groups involved so as to be able to give positive proof. I am
interested here in illustrating the group process through the presi-
dency, and I merely choose the most probable of the explanations
of the special fact; it might on the contrary be the case that the
tariff-reform groupings have been temporarily hindered by defects
in governmental technique from expressing themselves through the
government, in which case they will express themselves a few years
from now in more emphatic form; or it might be that the issue has
stepped aside for others of greater intensity in which case it will
return to its due place with every indication of huge energy before
long. But in either of these cases the group process ofTcrs the best
and fullest statement of the facts, just as it does in the contingency
I have deemed most probable at the moment of writing, in default
of thoroughgoing study.
Roosevelt, or rather the Roosevelt leadership whicli we observe
348 nil': PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
in process, is a highly Ik-xibk- mechanism, capable of reflecting
many varieties of group activities, with great exactness, both as to
their linis of movement and as to their intensities. The groups can
function Ihrougli a Roosevelt much more rapidly than through a
leader more firmly set in the i)arlicular group interests he especially
reflects, and less flexible in reflecting others. The tariff battle
was therefore fought and lost in Roosevelt's own person, with much
the same outcome as there would have been had the fight gone
through Congress, while in the meantime Congress has been an
open channel for the settlement of many other issues in which
Roosevelt has been at the front in behalf of interest groups which
were big and strong enough to win out. It is just this flexibility
and accuracy in representing group interests that makes the clever
politician under such interest conditions as now prevail in American
public life, and the indications are that we shall have use for very
much more of it in the future as a labor-saving device.
The essential point in an interpretation of government concerns
the great pressures at work and the main lines of the outcome. It
is relatively incidental whether a particular battle is fought bitterly
through two or more presidencies, or whether it is adjusted peace-
fully in a single presidency, so long as we can show a similar out-
come. This is true because the vast mass of the matter of govern-
ment is not what appears on the surface in discussions, theories,
congresses, or even in wars, but what is persistently present in the
background. It is somewhat as it is when twenty heirs want to
contest a will, but have only a single heir appear in the proceedings,
while the other nineteen hang back in the shadow. The story will
concern the fight of the one; but the reality concerns the silent
nineteen as well.
Observing the political ferment of a country organized with
representative institutions, one may easily think that a mass of
issues is more closely bound up together than is the case; the
sweeping assertions of party orators in their campaign w^ork or of
other popular leaders at other times may strengthen the impression.
And one may infer from an uprising of "the people" that any one
of a lot of reforms could be put through by this single force were it
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE EXECUTIVE 349
properly directed. So one may identify the tariff-reform move-
ment at bottom with the anti-trust movement, and argue that both
have the same strength as resting in the "people." But it is just
this confusion and vagueness which the method of analysis into
groups should enable us to rid ourselves of. We can there find
out why, for example, the president cannot at a given time lead a
campaign against the excrescences of the tariffs, but can lead one to
success against certain railway rate abuses. There was a time,
indeed, when the tariff and trust issues were more closely allied;
and the reason why the trusts w^re not then struck at through the
tariff had to do mainly with the lesser strength of and the greater
resistance to the movement along anti-tariff lines in comparison
with movements on other lines against the injuries felt by the con-
sumer as inflicted on him by large industrial organizations. Since
then the group objectives have differentiated noticeably. In
neither case have any abstract equities, or any specialized theories
as to the relation between the tariff and trust development been
decisive. Political economy may reason, or it may rave, against
these popular movements, but it is only playing with the fringe
on their edges. It is never a test for the movements ; instead what
vitality it possesses it draws from the movements. The man of
wisdom may laugh at the popular theories as to the connection
between prosperity and the dominance of one or the other political
party; but the political groupings that grow not out of the theories,
but out of the underlying economic groupings, are socially very
much more real than the wise man's scornful wisdom can ever be.
And so long as we find Roosevelt leadership letting the tariff-
reform issue lie idle, and Hearst leadership putting protection
among its most sacred democratic planks (whether Hearst actually
made a poll of the working-men, and found 90 per cent, of tlicm
protectionists or not), we may follow the given clue in studying
the groupings of the people with reference to the conditions out of
which tariff issues are built, without fearing that we will be misled.
Turn now to the president's action in connection with the
anthracite coal strike, to observe a different phase of the group
j^SO THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
Ifailcrshi]). Thi-TL' can be no doubt that the president's intervention
lay very far outside of the presidential powers as known to consti-
tutional law. There can be no doubt also that a large group,
which can roughly be designated as the coal -consumers' group,
had formed as the result of the strike, and that it had no other
channel in the government through which it could secure relief
except the presidency. There is no doubt that this group was
behind the president in his action. While as a matter of fact the
president exercised coercion on the coal operators, it is also true
that had not this great group of people so heartily indorsed his
intervention, he would not have succeeded, because the coal opera-
tors then could have ignored his offer of mediation. We find,
then, the president not merely representing a great mass of the
people but actually exercising a power which he would not have
had, formally or actually, had they not been immediately behind
him. Of course such a statement as this is true of every act the
president takes, if we go deep enough into it, but here it is clear at
a gbncc.
For his action the president of course suffered much criticism.
And a favorite phrasing of this criticism was in regard to executive
usurpation, in regard to the collapse of the Constitution, in regard to
the peril to our liberties from executive power. Such reasoning,
as we currently met it, represented inevitably the coal owners' side
of the controversy. Not that no men could be found advancing
it who were not personally free from any alliance with the operators'
interest, but that whatever men of this type were found were
merely transition phenomena. The central fact we observed was
that men'in the mass on the employers' side grew ever hotter and
more intense with this argument, while on the consumers' side men
in the mass swiftly came to disregard it entirely.
No constitutional argument, no attack of nerves, any more than
any inordinate ambition of any man can effect the expanding or
the shrinking of the presidency in our government. The constitu-
tional-argument group stands as a fact, and at times it may be a
huge fact, say with almost every individual citizen belonging to it.
But it is a highly representative group on the level of talk, and the
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE EXECUTIVE 351
minute the facts frame themselves up, that is, the minute the
deeper-lying group interests shift so that this talk group no longer
adequately represents them in fact, that moment the talk group is
doomed; and long before the talk group has shrunk to small pro-
portions the action of the lower-lying groups will be rushing for-
ward through the presidency toward its ends. If group interests
tend in a certain direction, and are checked in their course through
Congress, they will find their way through the presidency. If the
group interests take permanently a form which makes Congress
an inadequate agency for them, then the presidency will consolidate
its power. If on the other hand the shifting of the interests or the
change in Congress makes the latter agency adequate, then the
presidency's power will readjust itself accordingly. The key to
the whole situation is to be found in the interest groups, save only
as a fixed distribution of work between the agencies, maintained
for some time, will tend to maintain itself thereafter indefinitely
just as it has been adjusted, providing there is no positive reason
for altering it.
Another compact illustration of a great set of group interests
working through the presidency, this time to bring about legisla-
tion, a work which is supposed to be the proper function of Con-
gress, is offered us by the beef -inspection bill of the spring of 1906.
If we should follow through the steps of this legislation we should
find them something like this: First, an initiative in which the
secretary of agriculture and his subordinates acting for the meat
consumers of the nation without their much knowing or caring
about it, urged legislation along substantially the lines that were
ultimately enacted. Here you have an act typical of the benevolent
despot, so far as the form of the representation goes. Next a
committee of the House of Representatives holds the draft of the
bill in its keeping indefinitely, giving public hearings now and then,
but making no progress toward reporting a bill. Here you have
organized representative forms, but actually a fixed group domi-
nance, corresponding closely with the class dominance of many
harshly organized go\crnments. Then comes a Congress wliich
never sees, hears of, or thinks of the bill. Finally comes the presi-
352 rill': J'ROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
dent, backing' u]) his secretary of agriculture, watching a favorable
chance, but in tluory having nothing whatever to do with any such
legislation till it is put on his table for his signature. What then ?
There came a day when the president found his chance; the
incident that gave it to him happened to be a book, but it might
have been any one of a number of other things. He used his
chance, proved on the spot that his judgment of the mtcrest group-
ing of the population was correct, bullied the congressional repre-
sentatives of the beef interests until they surrendered, and the
Congress finally went through the forms of legislation. But to
every eye directed at the facts it was the president who made that
law, he alone serving as the real legislature, with the nominal Con-
gress acting little more than as a bad-tempered recording clerk.
The president was the legislative organ, through which the great
group interest functioned in this case.
These illustrations may perhaps be said to be of exceptional
character. But if we take the president in his "routine" work of
administration, we still find him representing interest groups. It
is very common to argue of law-enforcement as though all that was
involved in it was personal honesty on the part of the executive
and strict adherence to the letter of the law. But even apart from
the discretion that goes with executive office, every American can
see clearly in local government a phenomenon which is met with
in just as real, if not in just as pronounced, a form in federal govern-
ment, that sharply contradicts the accuracy of this method of talk-
ing. ^Vl^en a Maine sheriff is elected on an anti-prohibition
platform, he is standing strictly on his function in our political
system as a local check on central government if he allows the
saloons to continue; and when a Chicago mayor ignores the
denunciations of a comparatively small body of citizens and allows
the saloons to continue open on Sunday in violation of the state law,
he also may be honestly representing his locality, and indeed filHng
the place actually assigned to him by the constitution, even though
he does ignore his duty to enforce the state law. Here is a dilemma
created by the American method of distribution of governmental
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE EXECUTIVE 353
functions between state and local governments, and there is no
possible method of "reasoning" our way out of the difficulty. It is
a hard, tough fact, and nothing but Alexander's sword will make
its way through it.
In the presidency, as I said a moment ago, this same situation
appears, though not in so manifest a form. The president is con-
tinually a representative of groups of the population. Usually the
statute law specifies both the group interest which the president
must represent and also the lines of his activity in this representa-
tive process. There is, however, a great deal of "grand-stand-play"
law on the federal statute books, which represents, or has at one
time represented, the people on the mouth level, but not on the level
of deeper-lying interests, and which no one, outside of some small
groupings, really expects the president to enforce. There is also
much dead-letter law, forgotten by the law officers of the govern-
ment as well as by the people, which in the terminology of this
book is not real law at all, but merely occupies a favored position,
so that with less formality it can again become law if popular
initiative or federal attorneys in a representative capacity choose
to invoke it.
Suppose we take a case in which a group pressure has moved to
a certain extent through Congress, and has produced a statute, but
in which the opposition has not yet become reconciled to the
changed status ; or in other words, in which despite the statute, the
status is really not yet changed. We may find one set of group
interests represented in the Congress and another set in the presi-
dency, or perhaps we may find the same set represented in both,
except for the fact that the Congress has been forced to go through
certain dubious forms of representing the other set. Take for
example the Sherman anti-trust legislation, which so long remained
on the statute books with no serious attempt to enforce it, or the
anti-rebate provisions of the interstate commerce law. One may
denounce — or, altcrnativfly, j^raise — the presifk-nts who did not
enforce this legislation, but in either event such reference to their
character or intelligence or public spirit, or what not, is a very
feeble method of stating the facts, just as inordinate praise or
354 '••"•' I'KOCKSS OV G(JVERNMENT
blame of the |)crs()nulity of some president who did enforce it, is a
very weak statement. What we must get down to is the group
interests which the presidents and other officials respectively repre-
sented. Then the praise or blame, the moral outbursts, and the
reasonings, all alike, show themselves at their true worth as phases
of the group process. The enactment of the Sherman law repre-
sented a certain stage in a certain group struggle. The presidency
stood aligned with the groups which opposed the enactment of such
a statute — the fact that a president's signature was appended to the
law does not alter this situation. It is incidental to our present
consideration that the president's position was mediated through
party organization; the fact we are after here is that he did repre-
sent certain groupings and not certain others. The courts also
would have to be taken into account for a full statement, but that
also must be postponed. As time went on, the presidency, through
certain of the department heads, took gradual steps toward repre-
senting the interests in favor of the law. In recent years we have
seen the law invoked more vigorously than before, till now we may
say in this matter that the presidency is representing the groupings
that favor the law much more than those against it. The more or
less here comes into operation because of the complexity of the
agencies united in the presidency. The interstate commerce law^
well illustrates this, for we have at times seen the presidency through
the Interstate Commerce Commission representing the consumers,
and the presidency through other of its activities representing the
interest groupings allied with the railways.
Here is an illustration of another character. The regulation
of steamboats on navigable waters falls within the province of
the federal government. If the government should attempt to
suppress steamboats entirely, it would face an opposition of one
group of men looking for opportunities for profit, and of another
looking for transportation facilities. But such a thing as sup-
pression— barring alternative means of transportation — is some-
thing government will never undertake. The governmental pro-
cess is a group process, and this situation incidentally illustrates
my previous position that there is no such thing as a totality group
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE EXECUTIVE 355
in government. If the government should let steamboats operate
with full freedom from regulation, the activities just as they pro-
ceed would quickly stir into life group antagonisms, which would
fight for and against regulation. At one stage perhaps we should
find steamboat-owners arrayed against patrons in general. At
another stage we should find some of the steamboat-owners allied
with patrons against other steamboat-owners; that is, the owners
who saw in the better, higher-class patronage special profit oppor-
tunities would wish to regulate the poorer, cheaper boats which by
their frequent accidents brought discredit even on the best boats.
Out of the process come inevitably — that is as a matter of invariable
observation in a society like ours — laws providing regulation.
Given this situation, we have only here to watch the process of the
interests through the presidency as it is now organized. The
Slocum disaster in New York harbor a few years ago brought the
situation out in the clearest light. The steamboat interests had
secured representation through the presidency of such kind as
practically to substitute what they assented to, reduced to its
lowest terms, for the congressional enactment. The steamboat
patrons had lost their representation. This also can be fully
understood only as by-product in connection with the party organi-
zation of much of the presidential activity. But it cannot merely,
or justly, be described as a result of party organization. It was
essentially the representation of the interests in the presidency,
differing in content, not so much from the representation of the
same interests in Congress, as from the weight of the interests at the
time the law was enacted. The Slocum incident — any other
might have served the purpose — consolidated the patrons' groups
and put the owners' groups on the defensive. Also it put the party
on the defensive, but that again is another story, of a type to be held
for later consideration. The result was that the patrons' group,
showing the greater positive strength — in other words, the so-called
"popular will" — expressed itself first through the presidency direct
in the form of more stringent supervision of the inspection ser-
vice, and secondly through the Congress in the form of a new
statute.
356 Tirr: prockss of government
The Panama Canal j)r()jtrl, with its sharply defined interest
proupinRs, would furnish a good illustration of the direct represen-
tation of groups in the presidency; so would the history of civil-
service reform. And so also would thousands of the minor acts of
the presidency in its ordinary operation. But the few illustrations
above must suffice here.
The sheriff of a county will be found representing group inter-
ests in what he docs and in what he neglects. Incidental reference
to him in this respect has abeady been made. The office of a city
mayor is a very hotbed of interest representation, whether the coun-
cil has been reduced to a subordinate position, or is still co-ordinate
with the mayoralty. Sometimes, indeed frequently, the interests
that are organized through a party machine dominate the mayor,
and other interests have difficulty in gaining expression. Some-
times he represents opposition to these organized interests, but of
course only by representing the interests of the opposition. Whether
in legislation, in law-enforcement, or the management of public
enterprises, he is allowing interest groups a chance to express them-
selves through him, and whether he is strictly adhering to the letter
of some ordinance, or using his discretion narrowly or broadly, it is
a case of direct interest pressure. Our large cities' police forces
are in reality legislatures as well as executive agencies — they pay
so little attention to many laws, construct so much of their own
law, and choose so freely what statutes and ordinances they will
deign to enforce. They are part of the organized mayoralty, and
when complaint arises against them it is always from groups which
are not gaining representation, and which see in them the appro-
priated agencies of other groups which gain too much representation
to suit the objectors.
\Vliat is true in these other cases is true in the case of governors
and co-ordinate executive officials of states, save here the state
officials are of comparatively little consequence. A governor is
very apt under present conditions to give specially marked represen-
tation to the railroad groups of the state, and if a La Follette comes
along who establishes his strength on a different basis, he at once
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE EXECUTIVE 357
makes a spectacular figure. While representing the railroads on
certain lines of group distinction, the governor will represent large
portions of the railway patrons on other lines, but here again it will
always be the groups that function through him more or less directly
that count. They may function straight through the legislature
and the governor, with the governor one stage in serial order, or
certain groups may function through the legislature and subside
there, leaving opposition groups to function through the governor,
or again the initiative in the process may come in the governor's
office, and the legislature may not be used at all, in the attainment
of even very important ends.
Now to consider the position of our American executive in the
government in more general terms, and to compare him with the
typical despot, we may take up the examination on somewhat
different lines. The despot functions in a huge mass of custom.
Our executive functions within the lines of a constitution. There n.
is no vital difference here. From special points of view, of course, ''
there is a very great difference. First, because we can change our
Constitution with more ease than a despotic monarchy can change
its custom. Still the amendment of the American federal Constitu-
tion is no simple matter, even when there is very marked group
pressure in that direction; and if distinction is to be made along
this line, there is much less difference between an American execu-
tive and a despot than there is between the British executive and a
despot. Again — a fact that stands out in spectacular form, and is
indeed very important in the kind of industrial life we live — the
despot has free to him certain technical methods of keeping order .
and running his government, such as arbitrary judicial procedure / Kf
and punishment, which our executive cannot practically employ-
excepTin very limited range. An American executive may try to
bully a court, but he is very apt to find that his success will be less
than accrues to the cajolery or worse of the law-breaker whom he
is opposing. So far as a limitation of powers in the executive
agency along the lines of the threefold division is concerned, we V
have seen how, even upon a very partial application in theory,
358 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
tluTf is a systematic breakdown in i)ractice whenever the pressures
become strong enough.
The real distinction is as to the methods of approach that the
group interests have to the holder of central power, which includes
existence of alternative organs through which the groups may
express themselves if one is clogged up. In other words, it con-
cerns the technique the groups have for the control of the govern-
ment. Do certain interests block the legislature ? Then the execu-
tive may be set free. And vice versa. Meanwhile there is a
process through the courts checking both. Instead of conditions
corresponding to class domination, we have in our organization of
the interests conditions corresponding to the breaking down of set
classes, and a technique which helps to keep free the avenues of
group approach. We do not have by any means the most free
avenues of approach. Looking at a section of our history a decade
or two long, one may easily be tempted to say we have a government
which tends to favor class dominance. But despite some tremen-
dously strong underlying group interests, we have nevertheless fre-
quent evidences of the giving way of the fortifications of one set of
groups at the assault of another, and the freeing of the executive
from class domination. We have avenues of approach through the
government such that the class tendency can only advance to a cer-
tain degree before being overwhelmed, and that degree one which
probably falls far short, except in most exceptional temporary cases,
of the degree in which a resort to violence as the only effective
technique becomes necessary.
Executive discretion still exists, covering indeed a much larger
field than despotic discretion ever covers. It is a phenomenon of
group leadership. It is group leadership "within the govern-
ment," but it always stands face to face with organized group
leadership "without the government" (that is, without the govern-
ment in the narrowest sense but within the political process I have
called government in the intermediate sense). It is a discretion
that is not rigidly attached to one set of groups. If too rigid for
the moment, the strong leadership which opposes it from the out-
side will tend to displace it. It must yield or fall. If the execu-
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE EXECUTIVE 359
tive yields to a group organization gathering force from without,
before the legislature yields, it will gain in power as compared to
the legislature, until the legislature yields in its turn. Its gain in
power will seem a menace merely to those who are immediately
hurt by it, never to those who benefit by it. That is not a weak-
ness of human nature; it is rather the characteristic of what we
mean by the word menace itself. And moreover the hurts and the
benefits so loudly proclaimed are never permanent things; they are
small in comparison with the deeper-lying benefits; and if the
most powerful movement through the executive seems dangerous to
the "liberties of the state" or to any other fiction, we may be sure
that it will trickle away in driblets with access to power. For the ;
very nature of the group process (which our government shows in
a fairly well-developed form) is this, that groups are freely com-
bining, dissolving, and recombining in accordance with their interest
lines. And the lion when he has satisfied his physical need will lie
down quite lamb-like, however much louder his roars were than his
appetite justified.
We may put it thus : that if the group interests work out a fair
and satisfying adjustment through the legislature, then the execu-
tive sinks in prominence; that when the adjustment is not per-
fected in the legislature, then the executive arises in strength to do
the work; that the judiciary, on lines that will later appear, bears
in these points a relation to the executive somewhat similar to that
which the legislature bears, similar, that is, in quality, if not in
quantity; that the growth of executive discretion is therefore a
phase of the group process; that it cannot be understood in any
other way, and that no judgment concerning it will maintain itself
except through the group process and by the test of the group
process.
CHAPTER XV
THE PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE LEGISLATURE
Tested by the interest groups that function through them,
legisLitures are of two general types. First are those which repre-
'jsent one class or set of classes in the government as opposed to
some other class, which is usually represented in the monarch.
Second are those which are not the exclusive stronghold of one
class or set of classes, but are instead the channel for the function-
ing of all groupings of the population. The borders between the
two types are of course indistinct, but they approximate closely to
the borders between a society with class organization and one with
classes broken down into freer and more changeable group interests.
Neither the number of chambers in the legislative body nor the
constitutional relations of the legislature to the executive can
serve to define the two types. The several chambers may represent
several classes, or again the double-chamber system may be in
fact merely a technical division, with the same interests present in
both chambers. The executive may be a class representative, or
merely a co-ordinate organ, dividing with the legislature the labor
of providing channels through which the same lot of manifold
interest groups can work.
It lies almost on the surface that a legislature which is a class
agency will produce results in accordance with the class pressure
behind it. Its existence has been established by struggle, and its
life is a continual struggle against the representatives of the opposite
class. Of course there will be an immense deal of argument to
be heard on both sides, and the argument will involve the setting
forth of "reasons" in limitless number. It is indeed because of
the advantages (in group terms, of course) of such argument as a
technical means of adjustment that the legislative bodies survive.
Argument under certain conditions is a greater labor-saver than
blows, and in it the group interests more fully unfold themselves.
360
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE LEGISLATURE 361
But beneath all the argument lies the strength. The arguments
go no farther than the strength goes. What the new Russian duma
will get, if it survives, will be what the people it solidly represents are
strong enough to make it get, and no more and no less, with bombs
and finances, famine and corruption funds alike in the scale.
But the farther we advance among legislatures of the second
type, and the farther we get away from the direct appeal to muscle
and weapon, the more dilficult becomes the analysis of the group
components, the greater is the prominence that falls to the process
of argumentation, the more adroitly do the group forces mask
themselves in morals, ideals, and phrases, the more plausible
becomes the interpretation of the legislature's work as a matter of
reason, not of pressure, and the more common it is to hear condem-
nations of those portions of the process at which violence shows
through the reasoning as though they were per se perverted, degen-
erate, and the bearers of ruin. There is, of course, a strong, genuine
group opposition to the technique of violence, which is an important
social fact; but a statement of the whole legislative process in
terms of the discussion forms used by that anti-violence interest
group is wholly inadequate.
To anyone who is emotionally bound up to the personified
social will as the only adequate clue to the legislative process, what
I have to say will be a folly, although all that this work aims to do
is to avoid too narrow a connotation for the term will, and then
analyze the willing process as it actually appears, instead of glorify-
ing the name. Jellinek, the latest of the systematic political
scientists, discards in one sweep all the theories of law that rest on
might because they do not satisfy his desire to view law as the
" einheitlicher Wille" of the state. He discards all analyses of
legislation into the representation of interests because they offer
to him " schliesslich nur eine Karikatur dcr Wirklichkeit." To
views which define might or force abstractly and narrowlv as
direct physical activity, and which define interests as merely selfish,
his criticism will apply, though hardly to as great an extent as a
similar line of criticism would apply to views which insist on the
unified will of the state as the thing to emphasize. But with the
362 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
progress of the reduction of thought and morality factors into the
det'IHr-lying groui« which they represent and through which alone
they have a meaning, this form of criticism must disappear.
1 do not deem it necessary to say anything more about the
simple tribal governments in this place, for no agency of govern-
ment appears in them which can properly be assimilated to the
modern legislature, and I have already discussed the way in which
the group interests, fixed in customary forms, and there well
adjusted to one another, function through assembly, council, and
chief in making the further minor adjustments which from day
to day and from year to year are necessary. In later stages these
governments are affected in all their parts by the class differentia-
tion that appears, and every activity we can find of the kind that
we call legislative must receive class interpretation, w^hether we
have alternating governments, first of the rich, then of the poor
classes, or whether we have a balanced government with both
classes represented in it directly, all or most of the time. Indeed
the very presence of one or the other of these two forms of govern-
ment is susceptible of interpretation in terms of actual differences
in the group formations. The Greek city-states give us many
illustrations.
In Rome what has already been said of the executive in terms
of tlie classes can be repeated almost sentence for sentence with
reference to the legislating activity. At the best stage of the
republic the agencies of government were the magistrates, the
senate, which controlled directly all expenditures, and the three
assemblies, the concilium plebis, the comitia centuriata, and the
comitia tributa. Any one of the assemblies had full power to
legishte, but no one of them could have been caUed a legislature
in the sense of our modern definitions, any more than that name
would have been deserved either by the magistrates or by the
senate. The assemblies included all the citizens, but differently
distributed, so that the balance of power as between the classes
rested differently in them, and each had the duty of choosing
certain magistrates. My one of them could be prevented from
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE LEGISLATURE 363
taking action, however, by some magistrate chosen by one of the
others. The barriers were stitT and the struggles harsh, but barriers
gave way and struggles ended in compromise. Under the empe-
rors the system of jurisconsults was developed to provide adjustment
of conflicts adapted to the vastly more complex society of the times,
but the content of the decisions of the jurisconsults consisted of
the various pressures of the groups, as much as ever the content
of the governing process had been the class pressures in the days
of the assemblies.
I have said enough in previous chapters as to the way in which
government structures of the type of the modern legislature have
been produced, or, so to speak, cast up, by the pressures of classes.
If we take these legislative bodies as they stand today, we shall
find in all of them group oppositions which form both body and
soul of their activity. In the present German Empire the Bundes-
rath serves to equilibrate the pressures of the various states that
make up the empire. In the Reichstag all sorts of groups and
classes of the population are represented, though not on a basis
properly proportional to their strength outside the government,
if a counting of heads were the test. But there are more important
tests of strength than that. The adjustment of oppositions through
the Reichstag is not the main technique of adjustment in the Ger-
man Empire, but nevertheless it is important enough, and there
is not an issue nor a set of issues raised in the political field, which
is not fought and settled on a basis of group strength under the
given technique. It is the same with the issues of colonialism
and tariff as with social questions.
While the German Reichstag is a transition form between the
legislature of the older type which represented set class interests
against the monarch and the later type in which the whole process
of mediating all the groups of the nation is found, the French
legislature is clearly of the later type. Its activities as carried on
through the cabinet give us a much better showing of the group
pressures of the country than do the activities of the Reichstag
taken all alone. Whether the fight is over the octroi on wine in an
effort to strike at the consumption of absinthe and other liqueurs,
364 riii; PROCESS of government
or wlutluT it is anli-clcricalism, the (lominance of the stronger
interests apjx'ars in every case. It is as foolish to state the former
of the two issues I have mentioned as a temperance movement in
and for itself, as it is to state the latter issue as an "atheistic"
movement. The whole group formation must be taken into account
in order projurly to interpret what is happening. In the anti-cleri-
cal struggle the strength of the two sides has been tested over and
over again in elections, in parliamentary votes, in cabinet changes,
and in both hidden and open splits within the cabinet, and the
progress of the adjustment of the interests corresponds closely to
the manifested strength.
If we turn now to England we find the Parliament composed
of two bodies, one of which is still a class representative, and as
such comparatively very weak, for it has little strength apart from
that of the class behind it. The House of Lords has maintained
its existence solely by yielding its demands or shading them down
to what its strength has justified. Its very existence like its policies
depends on the same process of group struggles, and if it does not
yield in time of stress it will be ended or mended to suit the needs
of the case. Representing primarily a huge land-holding interest —
one-fifth or one-fourth of all the land of the kingdom — it is ultra-
conservative in all matters affecting directly or indirectly its land
rents and its related perquisites, but it is apt to be alarmingly
liberal in matters which are opposed primarily by manufacturing
or commercial interests.
The House of Commons on the contrary is the dominant organ
of government because in it all sorts of interest groupings gain
expression, or, at least, have an agency through which to gain
expression. Its adjustments, once registered, will be very much
closer to the balances of pressures outside of Parliament than
adjustments registered by the House of Lords can in general be.
It is true that its personnel has been mainly professional and
commercial, but the party system, as organized in the House itself
and outside, has served to make such a membership act as mediator
between the interest groups of the country, rather than as a narrow
class representative. If the labor party enters in force, and if the
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE LEGISLATURE 365
other parties break down into political groups in the current parlia-
mentary sense, that will be a change of technique itself brought
about by group pressures, but will not affect the process in the phase
of it which I am describing in this chapter. How even such an
issue as that of the pay of members of Parliament is decided on a
group basis will be readily recognized at the mere mention of the
labor members.
The British cabinet, whether in its executive or in its legislative
aspects, whether regarded in its dominating or in its subordinated
aspects with reference to the House, is part of the technique through
which this interest process plays. The cabinet leads the Parlia-
ment, and leads its party, and leads the country, but in each case
is part of the mechanism for the adjustment of group pressures.
In this brief sketch of the working of the group process through
a few typical legislatures I have said little or nothing about the
idea and theory activities which are always present. My further
illustration will be taken in somewhat more detail from the United
States, but even yet I must postpone the fuller consideration of the
various talking activities and the real facts for which they stand
to a later chapter in which I shall consider political parties inde-
pendently.
Taking our American federal legislature as a specialized govern-
mental agency on the lines of its personnel and its form of control
(that is, in this case, its manner of election), we find it consisting
of two houses. If the analysis were made on the lines of the cus-
tomary threefold division of "powers," the president would have
to be added as a third branch of the legislating agency, but for the
reasons already indicated that is not the best point of approach
to the phenomena.
When the Congress was constructed by the constitutional con-
vention there was an interest grouping on a locality basis which
was exceptionally active. I refer to the states with their jealousies,
and especially to the opposition between the large states and the
small states. We had there a genuine interest grouping, in the
sense that these interests cut deep enough to force themselves far
366 nil; TROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
along the linc-s of activity at the time. This interest grouping
worked itself out in that phase of the organization of the Senate
which gives an equal number of senators to each state. This
characteristic was clinched into the Senate so firmly that there it
remains to this day and there it will remain indefinitely, although
there have been so few activities in the actually working govern-
ment which have shown group opposition along large-state, small-
state lines, that I cannot call to mind a single illustration. The
system of two senators to each state survives as a technical method
of organization because it has not yet been enough of a nuisance
to make it become the focal point of group oppositions strong
enough to bear down the difficuUies in the way of abolishing it.
The division of the Congress into two houses was a projection
into the federal field of the habitual legislative organization of the
colonies. In the colonies it had been partly a projection of the
English organization, and partly an outgrowth of colonial class
lines such as those between the proprietors and the emigrants.
In Britain it grew out of class divisions, in the colonies it was sus-
tained by the usually less marked interest groups, and in the federal
Constitution it was a projection of the same organization, certainly
not in contradiction to the group organization of the population,
and probably directly commanded by the split of interest groups;
though just to what extent it is to be attributed to positive interest
groups at the time, and to what extent to a projection of habit, is
a matter for exact study, not for the passing of a personal judgment.
The statement of the result in terms of theory at the time was
that the Senate was to represent the states, and the House the
"people," with the more or less express addition that the Senate
would give the dominating planters of the South and merchants
of the North a stronghold in the government. The manner of
electing senators through the mediation of the state legislatures
must be connected with the fact that a high property qualification
then existed for membership in state legislatures. To state the
opposition as one between wealth and not-w^alth is too superficial.
The wealth requirements were technical means of keeping rule
in the hands of certain group interests, not to be exactly identified
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE LEGISLATURE 367
with wealth per se. In the lower house the members were at the
start elected in some states by districts and in others by general
tickets. The method varied in accordance with the need the states
felt for strong expression of some particular state interest. When
Congress discussed the subject at length prior to the legislation
of 1842, the states using the general ticket were mainly in the South.
The establishment of the district system over the whole land may
today be connected with the absence of any peculiar state interests,
the districts themselves being artificial except from the point of
view of party interests.
Now the story of the workings of the legislature, of the varying
aggressiveness of the two houses, of the way the lower house took
control of the presidency and then lost that control together with
much of its own importance to political parties organized with
machines and conventions, is well enough known. It is most
commonly pictured in its broad outlines as the increasing power of
"the people" in the government for one long period, and then of
the increasing power of great industries over the people through
the party organizations. But such characterizations are far
too broad. They have indeed a greater measure of truth than a
picture in terms of equality and progressive inequality, but they
need to be broken down into more exactly defined interest groups.
To do that is not the present task. But one thing may at least be
noted. With our fixed system, resting on a rarely summoned
agency, the constitutional convention, for formal change, we have
been compelled to function through agencies susceptible of com-
paratively slight structural changes; and for the most part, instead
of continuously modeling a system of government to meet our
needs, we have watched our interest groups play through the
different agencies in balance with one another, shifting their weight
now to this, now to that, in order to make progress. We have there-
fore registered comparatively few changes in the appearance of the
three constitutional agencies of government, but we have added a
new agency to them outside the Constitution, and have twisted
now one of them now another more in their temporary than in their
permanent workings. Even in the Civil War, in which a class split
;/.8 nil'; PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
cm i.ir down toward the roots of our social life, we only brought
about a temi)()rary exaltation of the presidency, and if legislation
later followed to bind the hands of the presidency in the matter of
removals from olTice, that too has disappeared without leaving a
jx-rmanent impress.
, We have then today both House and Senate organized on a
locality basis, which itself represents actual interest groups which
j at one time existed. But these locality groups, so far as they
function tli rough the government, have to a great extent long since
become of trifling importance, and they exist now as technique,
rather than as content of the governmental process. It is true
that a locality group, as composed of so many persons in a neigh-
borhood, does often present itself with a definite set of demands
upon the government, but as we shall later see, these fixed sets of
demands are rather to be regarded as the formal product of this
"artificial" locality grouping, than as the causes or the under-
lying warrant of it. The substance of their desires is mainly in the
nature of spoils — federal buildings, river improvements, jobs —
rather than of activities involving policies or legislation proper.
It is true that in some phases of the tariff disputes underlying local-
ity interests show themselves with vigor, that the negro question
raises the South against the North, and that economic questions
may sometimes bring the West into line against the East, while
the seaboard will have separate, though rarely conflicting, interests,
as compared with the inland regions. Perhaps the cities may
have interests in the federal governmental process which conflict
with the interests of rural districts, though certainly so long as a
city like New York finds no need to secure other than spoils repre-
sentation in Congress, it does not seem probable. But whatever
these underlying locality interest groupings are, they correspond
very roughly indeed with the actual locality organization of the
Congress.
This needs further consideration. The senators come two from
each state, but by a further arrangement it is common to have one
from each end of the state, or perhaps one from the big city, if any,
and the other from the "country." Each senator "represents"
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE LEGISLATURE 369
his part of the state to the extent of distributing jobs and looking
out for appropriations of local interest, but nothing more. The
senators of the South are keen on the negro question, and those of
New England on the tariff. A few other group lines can be traced
but for the most part all the senators are free for taking positions
on public questions entirely apart from any special locality interest.
It is true that " policy movements," as, for example, a movement
for railroad legislation, will be more advanced among the people
of one part of the country than of another, from time to time, but
with our present journalism these differences are much less than
they appear to be, and certainly the time difference from a locality
point of view between the front and the tail of such movement is
materially less than the length of a senatorial term; so that sena-
tors hardly give locality representation on this basis.
In the House, despite the election of the congressmen from indi-
vidual districts, there is very little real locality representation,
apart from the apportionment of federal "plums," If aU the con-
gressmen should go home to their districts to "test the feeling" of
the voters, when they came together again and made their reports,
the listener would allow much more for the " personal factor " in
the observations of the congressmen than for the locality factor.
And he would be more surprised to find the congressmen from one
group of states in practical agreement as to the voters' attitude in
their section and in opposition to the congressmen from another
group of states, than he would be to find congressmen of certain
non-local affiliations differing in a body from congressmen of other
non-local affiliations — barring, of course, a few of the issues men-
tioned heretofore as of sectional nature.
What we have therefore is a collection of congressmen and
senators, coming from locality groups, which in comparison with
the powerful interest groups that function through Congress are
of a formal nature, answering more as a technical means of election
than as any real embodiment of the strong existing lines of pressure.
The groups that most prominently work through the federal legis-
lature are largely occupational, or complexes of occupations, or
they are varieties of peace and order and self-protection groupings,
370 TIIH PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
whidi (iilTiT liltlf throuKhout the territory of the nation. It would
Ik' ii niatttr for exact study as to how frequently locality groupings
manifest themselves in the congressional votes; and while my own
tests show surprisingly little of it, they are but tests, not proof.
The general situation however, is evident enough.
In a condition of this kind the control of the representatives by
the voters is usually weak, and it is not a sign of degeneracy in the
character of the people, but rather a phenomenon to be normally
ex{X'cted, that in ordinary times the excrescence factors which grow
out of the local political subdivisions often count for more with
the voters than other factors on which no direct constituency test
can be had. In this I am simply stating the fact of observation,
not taking sides about it, or suggesting anything better.
We fmd then that the positive interest groupings which seek
ex{)ression in Congress turn to the party organizations to mediate
it, and by our two-party system we have a great framework erected,
I which holds all the localities together in a tolerably coherent system.
The discussion of the methods by which certain of the interest
groups have freer play through the parties than others must be
reserved for another chapter. Here I wish, for what remains,
mainly to illustrate the manner of the appearance of the pressures
in Congress and to show how the enactment of laws can most
adequately be stated in terms of such pressures.
Log-rolling is a term of opprobrium. This is because it is
used mainly with reference to its grosser forms. But grossness
as it is used in this connection merely means that certain factors
which we regard as of great importance are treated by the legislator
as of small importance and traded off by him for things which we
regard as a mess of pottage, but which he regards as the main
business of his activity. Log-rolling is, however, in fact, the most
characteristic legislative process. When one condemns it "in prin-
ciple," it is only by contrasting it with some assumed pure public
spirit which is supposed to guide legislators, or which ought to
guide them, and which enables them to pass judgment in Jovian
calm on that which is best "for the whole people." Since there is
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE LEGISLATURE 371
nothing which is best literally for the whole people, group arrays
being what they are, the test is useless, even if one could actually
find legislative judgments which are not reducible to interest-group
activities. And when we have reduced the legislative process to
the play of group interests, then log-rolling, or give and take, :
appears as the very nature of the process. It is compromise, not i
in the abstract moral form, which philosophers can sagely discuss, (
but in the practical form with which every legislator who gets /
results through government is acquainted. It is trading. It is \
the adjustment of interests.
Where interests must seek adjustment without legislative forms,
if they cannot get recognition through the ruling class or monarch,
they have no recourse but to take matters in their own hands and
proceed to open violence of war. When they have compromised
and made adjustments to such extent that their further process
can be carried forward in a legislature, they proceed to war on each
other, with the killing and maiming omitted. It is a battle of
strength, along lines of barter. The process is similar process,
but with changes in the technique.
There never was a time in the history of the American Congress
when legislation was conducted in any other way. One has but
to recall the struggle over the location of the federal capital, and
how the financial measures of Hamilton for the assuming of the
state debts were carried by trading votes with the advocates of the
Washington site. Jefferson was a party to this "deal," and he
was an expert at similar legislative work, as one can see in an
interesting way, for example, in the story of the wire-pulling which
resulted in the creation of the University of Virginia and the selec-
tion of its site. Nowadays tariff legislation is plain barter, based
on relative strength. Our river-and-harbor and our public-build-
ings bills are carried not by any standards of genuine national
needs, but by apportioning the favors to various states so as to
secure the requisite number of votes. From legislation in which
two factions, as say farmers and grain dealers, contend, each
giving way to some extent to the other, all the way along the
line to the plain barter of cash appropriations or to the barter of a
372 'II IK TROCKSS or GOVERxXMENT
pul)lic building against a vote for a reform in the law, the process
is the same at bottom. There is this great practical difference
Ix^twecn the various cases, however, that some of them are nuisances
and some of them are not; that some of them rouse against them
very wide but very weak interests, and that from time to time
the nuisance becomes so great that these wide, weak interests
strengthen themselves till they can abolish the particular kind of
deal in question. The wide weak groups turn the technical
means into content of activity, and fight along the indicated lines.
Of course along with all this log-rolling in all its forms goes a
great activity of reasoning, theorizing, and argument, and at times
the argument seems to be the cause of all that is happening. In
this latter case as in the others it merely provides a technical agency
for the transaction. The diflference is not in the trading process,
but rather in the particular kinds of interests that are gaining
expression; or sometimes in the stages of the process, whether
fundamental oppositions are being adjusted, or whether details
are being filled in. I hardly need add that in assimilating these
various legislative processes, I am not defending any which have
proved themselves such nuisances as to arouse group opposition.
There is another misunderstanding to which I may make
myself more liable, and a word here to ward it off, even though it
is mere repetition of what I have said in earlier chapters, is useful-
While I am making this discussion in terms of group struggles,
there is implied aU the time the habit background in which the
struggle proceeds. That is, there are limits to the technique of the
struggle, this involving also limits to the group demands, all of
which is solely a matter of empirical observation for the given time
and countr}'. Or, in other words, when the struggle proceeds too
harshly at any point there will become insistent in the society a
group more powerful than either of those involved which tends to
suppress the extreme and annoying methods of the groups in the
I priman.' struggle. It is within the embrace of these great lines of
1 activity that the smaller struggles proceed, and the ver}' word
struggle has meaning only with reference to its limitations.
Suppose, now, we take a piece of legislation like the statehood
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IX THE LEGISLATURE 373
bill passed in the spring of 1906. It provided for the admission
of Oklahoma and Indian Territory as one state,, and of Arizona
and New Mexico as another. If we sought our knowledge of
what happened from the accounts in the various newspapers and
from the Congressional Record and the committee reports, we
should find in addition to a very large amount of reasoning as to
why the territories should or should not be combined into two states,
some personal material about Senator Beveridge's long study of
the situation, similar facts about the way in which other members
of Congress "made up their minds," a great mass of objectively
stated facts about the territories, put forth as the basis upon which
minds were to be "made up," and some occasional accounts of the
activities of lobbies of Arizona mine-owners or other persons.
If we should proceed to reduce all this information to order,
we should soon find ourselves compelled to infer a great deal about
the meaning of different parts of it, or else go outside it or rather
through and behind it to get its value in the legislative process. If
we could not do this, we should have to wait for the outcome of
the voting in the two houses of Congress to get an idea of relative
strengths, and even then we should have but a superficial under-
standing of the forces.
Now in all this material there is nothing from the stump speeches
to the votes on final reading of the bill that cannot be reduced to
what it stands for in the term of groups of men, and there is no
other way to get a unified picture of the whole process except by
reducing it to such groups. I do not pretend here to state them
completely, much less to apportion relative weight to the various
groupings, but only to indicate, by way of illustration, how such a
problem must be approached.
First of all there were the locahty groups, the four territories.
Next there were the organized party interests. Democratic and
Republican, having a special eye to the senatorships to be created.
Then came the Arizona mine-owners, possessing certain present
privileges, and fearing their loss. Also there were transportation
interests directly involved, because of the probability of controlling
the senators who would be chosen from the more westerly of the
374 'iniC I'ROCKSS OF GOVERNMENT
two proiKJscd stiilcs. There was also a wider grouping of industrial
interests looking toward a similar end, and finally a very widespread
but comparativily weak interest of Americans in avoiding the
creation of "rotten-borough" states, which heightened at spots into
a more vigorous opj^osition to the introduction into the Senate of
more "corporation senators" than were necessary. To describe
these groujw I am using loose language in compromise with current
methods of sjx'ech, but I have solely in view the group activities
wliich were forging ahead through the political process.
Okkihoma and Indian Territory as locality groups quickly
proved themseh'es weak. Oklahoma had in rough figures only
one Indian to thirty whites, while Indian Territory had one Indian
to six whites. There was some vigorous leadership of the locality
groups in both of the territories, but it made little headway. No
strong allies were found, and the local demonstrations succumbed
easily to the pressure of the Republican party interests, backed up
by the wider anti-rotten-borough interest.
In Arizona and New Mexico the case was very difTerent.
Roughly, the proportion of Spanish- Americans including "greasers"
in Arizona was 25 per cent, or more of the population, and in New
Mexico it was 40 per cent. But here, although the Republican
party interest in preventing double statehood with double sets of
senators was even stronger than in the preceding case, there were
strong allies for the separation movement, and the locality inter-
ests presented themselves as the central point of the whole dispute.
Just how much appearance and how much reality there was in
this prominence of the locality interests would be a matter for exact
research, but the fact that the group interests involved were very
much Lirgcr and very much stronger than the locality interests is
well enough established.
Now in Congress the issue was fought out on several levels.
I will roughly name three of them. First the investigation made
by Senator Beveridge and his committee; secondly the argumenta-
tion, and thirdly the lobbying.
Wlien the committee filled itself full of facts about the popula-
tion, the resources, and the industries of .\rizona and New Mexico,
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE LEGISLATURE 375
about the probable working of government over the larger area of
the two territories combined, or about the relation between the
territorial population and the population of the older states, it was
doing nothing more than making itself the medium through which
the various group interests could state themselves. \Vlien it made
its report recommending joint statehood it set forth the adjustment
between these various group interests to the best of its representa-
tive ability. Had this committee been the final, instead of a pre-
liminary, stage in the law-enactment process it might not have
reported as it did. At any rate, it allowed a different group pres-
sure to dominate in the report it made than was actually able to
dominate through the whole Congress process. It reflected the
Republican party, anti-rotten-borough phase of the struggle,
rather than the locality interest. Democratic party, mine-owners'
and corporation- interest phase. The committee members repre-
sented directly certain group interests, and other group interests
were presented to them by men who appeared before them, but its
findings were passed along to Congress where all these same group
factors could express themselves in more elaborate ways.
Now, once out of the committee's hands, the argumentative
stage, which was active enough before, took on a great accession of
fervor. At once we found discussion groups reflecting all the
elements of the process through a technique peculiarly their own.
We heard unlimited talk about the right of the people (of the people
of the territories, that is) to govern themselves. States'-rights
methods of phrasing came back in swarms. The changes were
rung on rotten boroughs, wicked greasers, corrupt senators,
scheming mine-owners, and any quantity of other points. Just
so far as these arguments reflected group positions, and served to
develop them and make clear the lines of the contest, so far they
may be said to have counted in the result. That is they counted
inasmuch as they furnished a technique for bringing the group
struggle to a more adequate settlement. But so far as the argumen-
tation got away from existing group interests, so far, for example,
as it dwelt on states'-rights elements, we can assuredly set it down
as having been almost meaningless in the issue, except as a crude
oj6 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
symbol. I do not mean to make this remark apply to any possible
use of the "states'-rights" argument, but only to its use in this case;
and til is, no matter how vociferously some legislator may have
asserted he votefl as he did because he believed in letting the will
of the people rule, or in letting state sovereignty prevail, or in
letting local government decide. If we cannot reduce an argument
to group interest on its face, we may know we can reduce it to
similar interests indirectly, and make it appear but a mask for
those interests. There is just one way in which such an argument
as that of states' rights could count directly today in the settlement
of such an issue as the one before us, and that is, if off on the out-
skirts of Congress somewhere a member or two could be found who
reflected factors in the national life which as group interests have
by this time become very feeble, and which bob up here and there
in the way we call accidental ; and if, such members being found,
the vote in Congress was so close that they cast the deciding ballots,
then the argument would have direct meaning — that is it would
have directly indicated a group interest, and that group interest
under the particular circumstances would have been an important
factor, readily and exactly traceable, in the result. But even then
its effect would prove only transitory, as future events would
show.
Finally from the argumentative process, let us turn to the
lobbying. Underneath the flow of oratory, the group interests
were pressing toward the adjustment in Congress, and pulling and
hauling on the votes of the members to get representation. Other
interest groups irrupted into this particular struggle, and by the
log-rolling process diverted some of the votes one way or the other.
In such cases we sometimes j&nd a party organization interest
strong enough to force a caucus and make the party interest dom-
inate, or again we find the party interest too weak to suppress all
other group interests, and we have insurgents to consider. We
might pe-rhaps trace the process through technical methods border-
ing on the forbidden, and in the end wt might find the technique
becoming more important than the original content, so that a new
grouping would have to turn upon it and ruthlessly attack it.
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE LEGISLATURE 377
Out of it all we come in the end to the voting, and there if our
study has been full enough we can trace back the group interests,
and even on the rough votes, each a crude lump of pressures, we
can make our analysis with fair accuracy.
I have sketched this bit of legislation, not exactly as it happened,
but in broad outlines, without tracing the lines of activity back
very far, either into party organizations or into the " public-opinion "
activities. But it is enough if I have made clear how the coarsest
phenomena, so to speak, the crudest, largest, broadest, are really
the most important in social interpretation, and how instead of
trying to reduce them into fine theoretical elements, we should
always aim to reduce the fine-spun theories into them, if we want
to get on the track of a reliable interpretation. Such a bit of
legislation could conceivably be worked down into its finest details,
that is, into the smallest group pressures that affected it in its prog-
ress, but that is no more necessary in the analysis of government
than in any other scientific work. We need to know with utmost
precision how the group process goes on, but we do not need to
know in the case of any particular legislative act every single group
that was involved, any more than we need to know in the case of
a particular bodily organ every detail of the pressures inside the
body which make it take on its peculiar size and form, or in the
case of a particular man's muscle every detail of the exercising that
brought it to its given structure and strength. Our most powerful
microscope must be directed on the feeling-thinking activity in
the relations of its processes, but not on every minute particular
of the individual elements which have given a particular social
phenomenon its particular shape at its particular time. The
outlines of such concrete interpretations are, after all, the only
thing that we can handle or make useful.
K instead of taking a single isolated project of law we should
take some general tendency of legislation across federal and state
governments, as, for instance, that concerning the free and com-
pulsory education of the common schools, we should find the
interpretation in terms of groups to be even simpler to make, when
we once got on its track. Education laws in this country, whether
37« THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
lluy liavr forbidden education to black slaves, or tended to provide
education for free blacks, whether they have extended the range
of thi- common schools for the whites, or at times compromised
with |)arochial or other private schools, have all expressed at every
stage tlie group pressures of the society as they actually exist. We
have popular education where an efficient demand for it exists,
and that efficient demand is a group demand; and in studying
the process of government all that we need to do is to locate it where
it is. If our investigation took us behind the governmental process
and we wished to find the "causes" for the presence of that effec-
tive grou[) demand, we should here as eve^y^vhere else have to
look for them in the relations between the various group activities
of many kinds actually observable in the given society, the influ-
ences of city life being by no means among the least. So far as
we could connect the various group activities by analysis and
comparison, we should have material for an honest social inter-
pretation, vastly less pretentious and also vastly more depend-
able and useful than the current interpretation in terms of
ideas.
If we turn from the federal government to the cities, we shall
find plenty of illustrations of the group process through the council,
we shall find nothing that is not susceptible of group statement,
and we shaU find that we get much more coherence by such state-
ment than in any other way.
I watched, for example, not long ago the process of the city
of Chicago in doubling its saloon license fee, and in setting a limit
on the number of saloons in proportion to the population. The
saloons had fairly free scope in the city. The Sunday-closing
statute had been for decades ignored, and nothing more than a
small, though occasionally noisy, group demand for Sunday closing
could be found. A one-o'clock closing hour had succeeded a
nominal midnight closing hour some time previously and was
fairly well enforced except in the districts appropriated by vice.
The saloon interests were strongly organized, mainly with reference
to contests in the state legislature against local-option bills, but
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE LEGISLATURE 379
also for legal proceedings against municipal administrative mea-
sures. Normally a proposal to increase the license fee even by a
small percentage, would have passed unnoticed, whether made in
the council or out of it. That was because the saloon group, with
which the breweries as owners of a large portion of the saloons must
be joined, was strong and alert, and no effective opposition
to it could be found. But there came a time when a number of
atrocious crimes had been committed close together, most of which
were traceable, or supposed to be traceable, to saloon loafers, and a
very strong, if somewhat hysterical, discussion group directed against
crime was formed. This formulated itself more definitely in an
opposition to the excessive number of saloons, many of them living
a hand-to-mouth existence with the lowest kind of patronage. At
the same time the city was feeling acutely its chronic shortage of
revenue; or in other words, the city aldermen, under pressure
from a lot of group interests which demanded improvements of
one kind and another for which funds were lacking, were in their
representative capacity especially eager for more income. This
pressure for revenue, itself the result of a complex of group pressures
combined with the group antagonism to saloon abuses, took shape
in a proposal to increase the license fee from $500 to $1,000.
The fight, once started, was bitter, and it was not ended till after
a primary election had given the aldermen some opportunity to
test on a big scale the sentiment of their wards. In the process
there developed a distinct grouping of the people of Chicago along
locality lines. One set of wards as measured by majorities stood,
we may say, "for more revenue and fewer crimes." Another set
stood "for no reduction in our saloon facilities." The districts
were well defined on the map, with certain wavering wards where
one alderman might be found on each side, and where each alder-
man took a risk of representing his constituents wrongly. The
result was a victory for the $1,000 license without compromise;
and further legislation which as a compromise suited fairly well
almost all parties followed directly, providing that no additional
licenses should be issued beyond those in existence, till the propor-
tion of saloons to population had been almost cut in half. As a
V^o THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
matltr of fact the event proved that the existing number of saloons
was but little reduced, and therefore that the hard fight for "the
j)oor man's beer" had been waged on lines which in their verbal
statement we would call "false." They were very real group
fighting-lines, nevertheless, and among the realities of the political
process. The way the aldermanic votes were distributed, the
way the leadership in the fight was assigned, the way the issue
developed into life, the way the occupation and the law-and-order
interest groups formed, and the way finally that the locality group-
ings took shape at the climax, all send us to the study of masses of
men for their analysis and adequate statement. The way argu-
ments were made in terms of liberty, individualism, morality,
decency, freedom, paternalism, and so on, all send us to the same
kind of factors, if we want to get sure ground for our feet.
Every franchise grant given by a city is similarly a question of
interests, whether some small compact interest group seeking
financial profit succeeds by a technique of bribery, or whether an
aroused, excited group of abused citizens paying a high price
for poor transportation facilities turns the scale in the opposite
direction. And from the franchises of great public concern, if we
descend to the little franchises, the special privileges, and exemp-
tions which are bestowed by councils on individual citizens we
have the same thing. There is not an improper favor granted by
a careless or corrupt city council which is not given as part of a
system which involves the group organization behind the indi-
vidual alderman, the group organization of the aldermen with each
other, and over against it, gathering force perhaps for its suppres-
sion, the group organization of the non-favored. A free peddlers'
permit which presents itself first as a personal transaction between
the peddler and the alderman, and second as a personal transaction
between the alderman and either the mayor or "aldermanic
courtesy," as the case maybe, is in reality a product of much pres-
sure of conflicting interests and a stage in the appearance of other
interests which will have their say in the ultimate fate of the
custom of granting such permits.
I will leave the subject of interests in legislation at this point.
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE LEGISLATURE 381
in order to discuss the operation of interests through the judiciary;
but only after the political parties have been studied with reference
to the interests which function through them can we begin to
have a complete picture of the legislative process in its full
extent.
CHAPTER XVI
THE PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE JUDICIARY
The storied judge whose reputation was that of a Solomon till
one day he incautiously gave reasons for his judgment, has been
reincarnated in a thousand forms; and he has deserved it, for he is
not a jest but a truth. Told of an individual judge under circum-
stances to which the method of speech that puts things in terras of
reasons most adequately applies, the story is indeed a jest, but
the farther we get away from the individual judge and the nearer
we get to a large view of the judicial process the more closely does it
reflect not only the truth, but the whole truth. Through reason-
ing much of the process works, but the reasons are of the process,
not its directors.
The organized adjustment of disputes between man and man
can be traced up from private vengeance, through clan vengeance,
intra-clan adjudications by the assembly of the clansmen or by the
council of the elders or by the chief, and adjudication by a monarch
or by his lieutenants, to adjudications by organized courts more or
less sharply separated from the other agencies of government. The
initiative of the individual which was itself the very substance of
the rendering of justice at first is seen to subdue itself into a tech-
nical operation in the judicial process, and finally in criminal mat-
ters to yield place almost entirely to the initiative of an agent of the
government. The p)enalty which was blind vengeance and then
"limb for lunb" in early stages is seen to transform itself into cash
compensation, and finally in criminal cases is no longer paid to
the injured party but to the state. The method of proof is seen to
pass through many stages from the strength of the armed man and
the religious ordeal, to the sworn opinion of fellow-citizens, and
finally to the testimony of witnesses to the facts. And in the
process the simple direct "lump" situations which once presented
themselves for adjustment have grown enormously complex and
382
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE JUDICIARY 383
elaborate, showing many forms of contact with many phases of life.
In other words, a complex of group interactions has developed
which has found a more or less accurate representation in law as
theory in contrast to law as crude reactions.
These sentences of course make no pretense to furnishing a
sketch of juridical evolution. I write them merely to indicate
the range of phenomena within which we can see the group process
at work, and with reference to which, from beginning to end, the
group method of statement will be found most adequate for
scientific purposes.
We may begin with a society in which the injured man takes
his own vengeance. By contrast with our own complex law-
administering structure one may say it is anarchy. But that is
only a manner of denunciation from a strictly group point of view.
In fact the primitive man who seeks his own vengeance while his
fellows look on does it in fairly regular channels. The character
of the offenses against which he reacts has been determined largely
by past group process. The manner of seeking vengeance has
already become definite. The spectators play their part like a
simple public opinion. And if the limits are overstepped there
may appear a new seeking of vengeance to check the encroach-
ment. The whole process goes on in a great background of defi-
nitely formed custom. This is true in the simplest society, but it
is still more true where an ordeal of battle is carefully regulated,
and where preliminaries must be gone through before the contest.
Even in the simplest case we have "justice" for the outcome.
The issue is decided in a way which we call crude, but which
nevertheless takes up into itself something of the strength of many
men. It is not a mere figure of a speech, but a very real fact that
the strength of the group behind the avenger arms his muscle, and
that the culprit is weakened from the same source. The outcome
will not ever answer to everybody's views of justice, but then no
outcome in any adjudication, even under our most delicate methods
in the most favorable circumstances, will answer that test.
When clan vengeance is inflicted upon an outsider or upon the
outsider's clan, we have a process varying from the case of indi-
384 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
vidiuiJ vengeance mainly in the greater elaboration of the executing
agency. Tlie interests in action are substantially the same, but the
common clan action gives them a fuller expression, both by giving
a more complete possibility of vengeance to the directly injured
man, and Ijy allowing the cormected interest groupings of the
clansmen to control the process more precisely from beginning
to end.
As viewed from the standpoint of government in the narrower
sense there is a great development, now, when we pass to judicial
process in which a third party appears to mediate between the
contestants, that is, in which a relatively disinterested agency of
government appears. In the broader view of government no sharp
break appears, because all the interest groupings that were actively
present before are present still, and they are still predominant in
what is happening. Just as was the case when in the transition to
clan vengeance a new technique for the expression of these inter-
ests was given, so now a better technique appears — better, that is,
for the changed circumstances. The significant fact in the new
device is that it is a differentiated governing agency of the general
kind which we observe all the way up the scale of social develop-
ment. As such it permits a fuller expression of the interest group-
ings, or in other words it permits additional interests to come to
effective expression, or to more effective expression.
Without going into details we can easily see how new interest
groupings on new planes can effectuate a transition from private
vengeance to mediated vengeance. The society becoming more
thickly settled, with more persistent routine industrial operations,
may be in a continual turmoil through the operations of the private
vengeance system. Then there may develop an interest grouping
bent on suppressing the turmoil, and the outcome may be the
mediating body. We can see just this process all the way up the
course of judicial development, and we can watch it today in more
regions than one. For example, wt today have no established
mediating bodies between nations. We nevertheless have an
international law which controls, in fact, the processes of war,
much as the environing custom controlled the processes of private
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE JUDICIARY 385
vengeance. We have the Hague tribunal resting on a great cross-
nation interest grouping, which feels strongly the injuries of war
and is directed against that technical method of adjustment,
making it the content of its opposition, and tending to substitute
for it a different method of adjustment, for which the Hague tri-
bunal dimly indicates the outlines. Interests on the old lines are
present and will continue to be present, but a new interest grouping
forces itself into the field and insists on modifying the process of
adjustment. And similarly with regard to industrial disputes
between employers and employees. Even when they are carried
on in accordance with law and simple moral standards, we find
them making so much disturbance for so many of the people that
they arouse a new interest grouping — roughly to be styled the
"consumers" — bent on suppressing the nuisance. And whether
compulsory industrial arbitration becomes established or not, will
depend, not on reasoning — although mediated through reasoning —
but primarily on whether the nuisances become violent enough to
compel a remedy. Anybody with an eye keen enough to analyze
the interest groupings as they actually will make themselves felt can
predict on broad lines the outcome of the movement for industrial
arbitration — and nobody else can.
Now, to return to our mediating body, we may find the case of
the assembly of the people passing judgment between two members.
Perhaps one contestant will be banished with or without formal act
of the assembly. Perhaps the payment of compensation will be
imposed. But however informal or however formal the process,
what we have is what we would have had previously under the
personal-vengeance system, only with a more complete expression
of the wider group interests of the community, which specify them-
selves at the given time and place so noticeably that we are justified
in calling them new group interests, or group interests on a new
plane.
If the work of rendering judgment is handed over by the com-
munity to a body of elders or chosen men, that fact will be the
direct outcome of such group factors as the changing modes of living,
including the number of members in the society, the manners of
386 riii; PROCESS of government
working, the dislribulion of the people, whether scattered or
crowded, and whether permanently together or sometimes broken
into hunting or fighting parties, and so forth. But the decision of
the elders will have for its elements the same material that func-
tioned through private vengeance, or clan vengeance, or assembly
edict, as the case may be.
Now, of course, it is possible that from time to time we shall find
a court of ciders doing its work in a way to stir up opposition.
This condition will most usually be one phase of class dominance
in the community. Whenever the elders do not let all the interests
function through them, when they get warped in their representa-
tive capacity, then inevitably comes resistance, which may in the
given time or place be sufficient to produce a change in the system
of administering justice. Perhaps the chief or kinglet will take
over the work. It will be for the better functioning of the interest
groups through him, with respect to their strengths. If "abuses"
later arise through his administration, they also must be inter-
preted through the interest groupings that are at work. If such
abuses maintain themselves indefinitely, it is only because they
represent a dominant grouping in the community or because with-
out the king and his abuses the situation would be worse than with
them, as the members of the society actually experience it; alter-
natives which really come to much the same thing at bottom.
Not only the form of adjudication, but also the character of
the penalties and the character of the proof can easily be reduced
to similar group elements.
If we turn now to the developed nation and take it in its despotic
form, we are apt to find adjudication of disputes appearing as one
of the perquisites of the monarchy. And yet, however widely the
bribery of judges may flourish, and however much the monarchy
may draw profits from administering justice, there will be a sub-
stantial substratum of work done which will be a fundamental
factor in the maintenance of the governmental system of the time.
Not that the despot can easily be overthrown for bad administra-
tion of justice alone, nor that he is maintained for the substantial
adjudication work he does alone, but that these things count in
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE JUDICIARY 387
with the rest of the operations of the monarchy, and cannot be
omitted from that balancing of groups which "is" the monarchy.
Somewhere in the development we shall begin to see signs of a
differentiation between judicial proceedings which are initiated by
some differentiated agent of the monarch directly and those which
still have as their technical start the initiative of individual citi-
zens. Perhaps offenses against the state, analogous to our treason,
will be among the first which the monarch by his agent will himself
cause to be prosecuted before himself as he is organized through
other agents as a court. However this be, the prosecuting official
who here appears will be a representative of those underlying
interests which uphold the monarchy, differentiated for this special
purpose. And again, however much the monarch "abuses" his
power, the fact makes no difference in the nature of the process that
is going on, although it does make a big difference in his personal
fate, in the fate of some of his subjects, and in the development of
new and improved technique for the better mediation of the
interests.
Of much greater significance than this is the fixed differentiation
that comes to pass in time between the courts and the monarch in
his other activities. In part we have a division of labor compelled
by the mere mass of the labor, with a certain portion, namely court
adjudication, standing to one side for so many purposes that it
gains a relative independence from the rest of the government. It
stands to one side because the interest groupings which are going
through it are separated to a considerable extent from the interest
groupings which arc going through the rest of the government.
That would not protect it from arbitrary, if occasional, interference
by the monarch, and only a well-differentiated interest grouping
which insists on such protection can create it and maintain it
permanently, even in moderate degree. This judicial separation
may appear in locality forms when it can take strong roots as it did
in England, or also in central forms in which again England is the
best example. Wlien this comes about, the public prosecutor
gains in importance as the representative of the rest of the govern-
ment before the separated courts. The interest groupings directly
388 THE i'ROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
rrprc-sinlcd by the monarch may break down the separation tem-
porarily, but the variations Ixickward and forward must be entirely
stated in terms of these pressures, whether separately or jointly.
The jury system, the "Schoffen," the life tenure, and so forth, are
various devices adopted either by specific pressure from under-
lying interests, or by the specification of vague pressures by the
representative central organ of government, for the sake of giving
the judicial system the measure of independence which is demanded
for it from the other agencies of government.
When we come finally to the United States, we observe that the
very measures which have been taken, according to common
theory, to separate the judicial "power" from the executive and
legislative "powers" have actually ended by bringing about a new
confusion of the "powers," however much the agencies remaui
distinct. The unique work of American courts in overriding legis-
tures and executives on constitutional points is well enough known.
This activity places the courts — or, more properly, the supreme
courts of states and of nation — as intermediate agencies between
legislatures and executives on the one side and constitutional con-
ventions on the other. We have in the United States but rarely
illustrations of the executive as representative of group interests
interfering directly with the judiciary, though an organization like
Tammany Hall can knit executives and judges together in a tight
system, and President Roosevelt has recently made one or two
vigorous attempts to bully federal courts. But we have luminous
instances of the same group pressures which operate through
executives and legislatures, operating also through supreme courts
and bringing about changes in law in a field above the legislatures,
, but short of the constitutional conventions; changes which no
process of legal or constitutional reasoning will adequately mediate,
but which must be interpreted directly in terms of pressures of
group interests. And we are clearly on the road to witnessing even
more picturesque operations of the governmental process through
our courts in this respect. I shall proceed to give some illustra-
tion of judicial process in America, and on the basis of these illus-
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE JUDICIARY 389
trations I shall try to show more fully than I have yet done how the
legal reasoning and the legal science fit into the process.
The phase of American judicial history which stands forth in
greatest prominence is the work of Chief Justice Marshall, of the
federal Supreme Court, in upholding and broadening the powers
of the federal government. We are often told that federalist
"ideas" dominated the court in this important period; and we
hear elaborate discussions of the constitutional theories on the basis
of which the decisions were rendered. Now it is an easy thing and
by no means wrong, to draw analogies between Marshall's work
and federalist policies as proclaimed by federalist leaders; and
assuredly the reasonings which were set forth as underlying the
great court decisions have not only a deep professional interest,
but are also essential to the scientific student as pointing out to
him the way to some of the knowledge he needs. But when all
this is admitted, it takes us but a little way, and we shall get a great
deal nearer to an adequate statement of what was taking place
if we analyze the great interest groupings of the country which
were then active in the fields on which jurists had to center their
attention, if we observe how these interest groupings made them-
selves manifest in the great cases that went before the court, if we
note how these phases of the life of the nation were reflected in the
personalities of the justices as well as in their reasonings, and if we
thus get the cases and the theories and the precedents and the
people all stated in one common set of pressures, every factor in
terms of the others with exact reference to what it represented in
the others, and what perhaps the others represented in it. This
manner of statement does not do violence at all to the possibility
that had another than John Marshall held the chief justiceship for
all these years, say for example an appointee of Thomas Jcft'erson's,
our legal history, and indeed much of the rest of our history, as it is
written from a surface view, would have been different. It only
insists that that surface difference would not have represented a
deeper-lying difference in our development. On the basis, not
merely of the Marshall decisions but of all the rest of our country's
history which bears on this point, we may feel sure that the interests
390 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
that underlay those decisions, if they could not have gained expres-
sion through Marshall, would have gained it in some other way.
The power was not in Marshall, but in the interest groups he so
adetjuately recognized and allowed to come so smoothly and
speedily to their due dominance in the government. And per
contra, if the interest groupings had been actually different from
Marshall's reflection of them, his decisions would have been but
temporary obstacles and would have been overwhelmed, not by any
virtue in some other constitutional theory or reasoning, but by the
power of the underlying interests which pump all the logic into
theory that theory ever obtains.
Turn now to a concrete decision of the greatest importance
handed down by our Supreme Court, the Dartmouth College case,
which has been generally followed by the state courts. Here was a
decision which might conceivably have gone the other way; cer-
tainly there was "reasoning" enough to support either side. But
it is a question, if it had been the contrary of what it was, whether
a way would not have been found later on to get around the decision
and make the law in effect what it actually has been. This was a
land of opportunities ; and among those opportunities were all those
in which the investor must have preliminary dealings with the
government; and it was greatly to the interest of large masses of
the people that certain of these franchise opportunities should
early be utilized. Too great an uncertainty in the utilization of
them would have turned the investor to other fields, leaving
the fields in question to lie fallow, whereby a strong interest group-
ing demanding the grant of charters on fixed and certain terms
would have developed, and by one means or another, whether
constitution-making or representative judicial insight, the cer-
tainty would have been granted. I do not mean to pass a positive
opinion on this, for I do not pretend to have studied the groupings
of the population well enough to do it. Be it as it may, the impor-
tant thing for us here is that the time came when the opportunities,
once uncertain, had become bedrocks of certainty, and when
group interests began to form, this time looking not toward the
utilization of those opportunities but toward the control of that
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IX THE JUDICIARY 391
utilization where injuries were being inflicted. Thereupon the pre-
cedent of the Dartmouth College case was doomed: doomed, that
is, unless the interest groupings which get aid from it prove to
have such actual accumulated strength that they can maintain it
with aU that its maintenance implies — and there is nothing in my
study of the group pressures of the country to indicate this to me —
or unless, after the precedent has been broken down, new group
interests develop for its restoration in some modified form. This
work is now under way, though indeed not far advanced as yet.
Around the country one can find in many state supreme courts
decisions which after much prying have found methods, or rather
excuses, for opening loopholes to public control at one point and
another. Even in the federal Supreme Court progress in this
direction has been made. I do not mean that the tendency has
reached a point at which an overthrow of the precedent "in prin-
ciple" has occurred; but that the position of corporations before
the law is in fact rapidly being changed ; while at the same time
strong minority opinions against even the so-called "principle"
are ever more frequently handed down. Just how far the work
will be done through the courts and how far through constitutional
conventions is a matter of detail, but that it can all be done through
the courts is certain.
The slavery decisions of the Supreme Court are instances of
pressures that have come into the judicial agency of our govern-
ment in bulk, so to speak, rather than in neat, well-tied parcels of
legal argument. So again, are the legal-tender decisions. The
income-tax decision will not improbably face its Waterloo, not
because of any gro\\1:h in brain power or development of reasoning
ability among the lawyers of this country, nor because of any
greater comprehension of "truth," but because of the shifting of
group interests as recognized by Supreme Court members ancLl
reflected by them in their decisions. So again it is not an impossi-
bility that if the federal legislature decides to regulate life insurance
— it refused to take up this task a short time ago "on constitutional
grounds," a phrase which masks instead of adequately representing
the nature of its decision — the Supreme Court will permit it, Paul
392 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
vs. Virginia and all the other cases to the contrary notwithstanding.
There will be nothing to this but interest groups functioning
through the court, and in no other manner of speech can it ade-
quately be described.
I will content myself with one more illustration on this point.
Early in 1906 the Supreme Court at Washington handed down a
decision with reference to the asserted " nincty-nine-year rights " of
the Chicago traction companies, which the city of Chicago was con-
testing in the hope not so much of overthrowing them as of limiting
their application. I have not the slightest hesitation in asserting, and
1 think few persons who know the case will deny, that ten years ago
the court, though it had been composed of the identical justices,
would have yielded the companies their claim.' Now, however,
the decision was in favor of the city and some seventy million
dollars' worth of franchise rights, more or less, were practically
confiscated at the stroke of a pen, to the very great advantage of
everybody concerned except those who lost their respectable piece
of plunder. Now it took most considerable ingenuity in legal
reasoning for a line of argument to be developed whereby this
decision could be justified. Most of the ordinary legal argument
went the other way, and few of the really substantial lawyers on
the city's side dreamed they would get such a victory. But they
urged their case most vigorously, they pushed to the front before the
Supreme Court their advocates most learned in the voice of the
people rather than in the rules of the law, and they allowed " public
opinion" all over the country about all sorts of related topics, such
as municipal ownership, government ownership, wicked capitalists,
socialism, and what not to speak for them. And the result was that
the Supreme Court laid down a rule of strict construction so infin-
I A somewhat similar remark upon another decision has attracted my attention
since the above was written. In the Atlantic Monthly, December, 1906, M. M.
Bigelow writes: "The Supreme Court of the United States decides that a corpora-
tion cannot hide itself behind the plea of seK-incrimination, when called upon to
produce its letters and documents. This no doubt is gain; there are lawyers
who think it doubtful if the question would have been so decided a few years ago.
The judicial indicator is beginning to turn to the pressiu-e of the greater social force,
the public."
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE JUDICIARY 393
itely strict that it not only chopped off collateral benefits but that it
anniliilated the very grant which the legislature had most expressly
granted, which the governor had most vehemently and unsuccess-
fully attacked with his veto, which capitalists had most confidently
invested their money in, and which had seemed the very bedrock
of the whole situation between city and traction companies.
In this I am not criticizing the Supreme Court, much less
insinuating an}1;hing against it or any of its members. On the
contrary, speaking as a citizen with definite group affiliations, that
decision gave me such intense pleasure that I was quite sure we
had "a Daniel come to judgment." I do not mean that the jus-
tices consciously forced the law to fit the case, nor that they showed
any traces whatever of demagogism or of subserviency to popular
clamor. Quite the contrary. I am convinced that they all, or at
any rate most of them, acted with the most single-hearted desire —
if one must use such phrasing — to render justice in strict accor-
dance with precedent. What I do set forth about them is that so
far from being a sort of legal machine, they are a functioning part »
of this government, responsive to the group pressures within it, i
representative of all sorts of pressures, and using their represen-
tative judgment to bring these pressures to balance, not indeed
in just the same way, but on just the same basis, that any other
agency of government does, and that in this Chicago case they let
a changing weight of group interests come very clearly to expres-
sion. And I do set forth further that in the legal arguments on
neither side was there any merit or weight in bringing about this
decision, save as they held the mass of group pressures in compact
form for discussion purposes, as they let great masses of interests
not directly in question keep their places without being thrown
out of adjustment by the particular decision, and as they repre-
sented or reflected on the discussion level the actual achievement
of the court process to all the groupings of the country that were
interested in it.
In the matter of argument this case stood in somewhat the
position that the railroad rate legislation of 1906 w^iU stand if
it comes before the Supreme Court for a test of the so-called funda-
394 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
mental |)rmcii)k'S involved. I have marked closely the course of a
protracted discussion of -the law points that will come before the
court involving the interstate commerce commission's "law-mak-
ing" powers, and I have heard presented by the two sides to the
controversy trains of reasoning that lead inevitably, the one to
sustaining the commission's powers on each of the points af issue,
the other to the denial of those powers. The reasoning on each
side is so cogent, so unanswerable, that as reasoning it simply
cannot be overthrown. The Supreme Court will effectively use
whichever line of reasoning it wishes, to state and explain to the
country the decision which it will actually render on lines which,
although passing through reasoning, are reasoning's masters, not
its servants. The most perfect of logical machines, set to the
Constitution and to all the precedents, would have pathways
through it which would deliver simultaneous contradictory judg-
ments on the same point without the slightest shock to its mechan-
ism. Compared with the multiform irregularities of the pressure
of the interest groups in a highly complex society, the finest legal
logic is but a trivial fly-by-night, and the very essence of unreliability.
It is incumbent upon us, nevertheless, to recognize the work
that legal theory actually performs in the adjudication process,
and to g^'m as exact an estimate of it as possible. To do this we
must follow the same procedure we have used elsewhere, and
reduce it to group terms, and thereby make sure of the manner
in which it reflects other and presumably deeper-lying groupings.
We find all this theory in textbooks, in judges' opinions, in lawyers*
arguments. Most remote from the pressure of the interests
working directly through the courts is the "philosophy of law."
A little closer we find the "general principles" of constitutional
and legal argument. Nearer still are masses of special theories
which are knit together more or less closely with the general
principles. Then we come at last to the special arguments as
used in the pleadings, which reflect directly phases of the par-
ticular process that is going on through the courts. All of these
are activities. All of them are remotely or directly part of the
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE JUDICIARY 395
court process. Our philosopher of law, mirroring the process
from his far-off distant height, may mirror it in part truly, and it
may he that his activity will aid the interest adjustments where
they are clogged to shape themselves better. If so, it is a matter
for exact study to establish, and this cannot be accomplished by a
mere observation of some general correspondence or of some
partial correspondence between theory and developments as we
look back upon them. Whether we note correspondence or
divergence, it will be necessary to make sure just how far as a
fact of activity the little active group of philosophers has really
mediated the deeper-lying interest groups. Just so far as it has
we must place it in the process, so to speak, at a central point,
and so far as it has not we must regard it as an incidental product
thrown off by the process at its periphery; and this, I repeat,
whether we hold that philosophy to be "true" or "false" from the
group point of view with which we identify ourselves when we
make such judgments as that.
The group activity which we may describe as that of "general
principles" is a discussion group in which large numbers of
active practitioners participate, and which indeed " all lawyers
come into contact with to some extent. Perhaps we can find
it affected to some little extent by the "philosophy" group men-
tioned above, but more probably we shall have to analyze it
almost entirely in terms of groups still lower lying than itself.
Almost repeating our previous words, we can say that so far as
it accurately reflects pressures and at the same time mediates
those pressures into better function where they are in any way
obstructed, so far we may bring it directly into our interpretation,
but that we must always be on our guard against giving it some
mystical potency because of its mere color of "truth." How it
has worked as one interest group mediating between lower-
lying interest groups and reflecting them in the process can only
be learned by exact examination.
Coming down next to the mass of special theories, we find them
framing themselves with great variety in lawyers' and judges'
activity, answering to the special cases, that is to the special
3(/) riii; I'RocKss of government
(lilTircntiatcfl inUrcst groupings, that arc at play. And still
lower down, among the actual arguments in the court we fmd a
gri-aliT variety still, with the special interest groups reflected in
very sjx'cific forms. But even here again we observe that we have
to do entirely with a representative activity, and that the whole
process can be understood only in terms of the interest groups
that are functioning still lower down in the series.
Of course I do not put forth this series of stages as one we
can universally use in grading our groups for purposes of study,
nor even as one I have found useful in any large number of cases.
It is schematic and merely illustrative. In actual work the grades
must be worked out on the material itself to meet the needs of
the problem.
Another warning is also necessary here. I am not in this
analysis segregating the interests at one end and the theory, under
the guise of intellect, at the other. From the most rarefied theory
downward, I am dealing entirely wdth interest groupings, and the
entire process is an intelligent, felt process, as I have argued at
length in an early chapter. What we have here to deal with is
the dilTerentiated discussion groups, and within them the differen-
tiated "pure-theory" groups, and the whole problem is as to the
rektion between the activities at these various stages, and as
to the amount of representativeness that can be observed in
them.
When a case is called in court it furnishes a plane upon which
we have potentially the entire population arraying itself in groups.
Sometimes we can observe a case in which such a group splitting
is represented by a very widely extended discussion group, or in
case "public opinion" is divided, we have tw^o discussion groups
making themselves evident in opposition to each other. Usually,
however, the discussion groups do not form, and the interest
groupings of the population are represented more or less adequately
by the organized judicial agencies of government. In addition
to this split on a plane formed by the direct issue in the case, we
find involved, potentially, a myriad of other groupings cutting
across the population at all angles, any of w^hich may come out
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE JUDICL\RY 397
to direct action, or may show itself in the discussion plane, either
inside or outside the courtroom.
Now the gradations of theory represent, or aim to represent,
interest groupings on lines of varying generality. Just as we may
have a lot of interest groups combining in a larger organization,
for certain ends, so we may have a theory, or rather a theoretical 1
statement or argument, representing such a complex of interest
groups. In the progress of the trial of any case, or in preparatory
stages before trial, or in the further stages as the whole social
process moves forward, we get complexes of interests expressed
in the form of theory. We have the criss-cross of interests, not
bound together by the theory, but represented by the theory as
they actually are bound together in our observation. Wherever,
as I said above, the interests are blocked or clogged, and wherever
under such circumstances the theory activity can enable them
to function more freely, wherever then it aids in the parturition,
so to speak, of interest groups manifesting themselves, there we
must give it a sort of individualized recognition for just what it is.
In very superficial speech we may there say that it creates a new
grouping, in the sense, that is, that through it that grouping pushes
itself farther along and more noticeably in the process. But
outside of this it merely represents the status of affairs; it speaks,
so to say, for the absent interests — which are absent only in the
sense that they are not emphatically manifesting themselves in
conflict at the moment. The theory therefore may be said to
function as holding together the system of interests, and as furnish-
ing a short-cut through which the interests that have balanced
themselves once may escape being compelled to make their fight all
over again and to work out the balance all over again at any and
every moment in the process when their adjustment is threatened.
It is in this court process as in all other processes of government.
Always in order to understand it we must cut down, to the deepest-
lying interest groups that we can find in the actual living population
at the time. How these interest groups are represented through
agencies of government, how through discussion groups, including
all llie tlieory, how indeed some of the underlying groups represent
398 nil. I'RorKSS or government
othtTs in f^nidation below those wc have just mentioned, is a
matdr for attual ol)servation and analysis made on the material
itself.
There is one other phase of this court process to consider;
that is the judiciary presenting itself as an organization with
sjK'cified interest lines of its own, which must be looked upon at
times, not merely as process for the interest content that is function-
ing through it, but as content over against content. I have already
indicated liow the judiciary under a class government may be
directly controlled by one class to the exclusion of others. It
remains to observe the judiciary as itself an interest group under
a freely functioning group organization of society.
There is a mass of judicial procedure, which comes to our
attention when it is interfering with us, under the name of the
technicalities of the law, much of which must be referred to this
judiciary's specialized interest. There exist lines of ease for the
judge and lawyers which are followed and elaborated by them,
short-cuts which when once established perhaps in very inadequate
and poorly representative form, are not worked over, but instead
arc allowed to stand as precedents until they become such a nuisance
that they arouse a fighting opposition. In the same way there
are portions of the substantive law which represent interest adjust-
ments of the past which are still held in position in the complex
system of the law although the interest groupings on the specific
lines of the particular law have varied materially, and which are
effective only till the storm has blown up to overturn them. It is
of the nature of representative agencies that they lag or hasten
ili-advisedly, and that they themselves at times come into conflict
with the very interest groupings, or portions of them, which are
functioning through them.
It is here also that should fall a discussion of what is meant
by talk of the independent development of the law as an " independ-
ent organism." \Miat modicum of "individuality" would be
left after the main lines of the function w^ere traced in terms of
interests pressing through executive, through legislature, and
through courts, would be a subject for specific investigation in
PRESSURE OF INTERESTS IN THE JUDICIARY 399
each case. That fragment of it which was not merely the " x"
set by the limits to our powers of study and observation, might
perhaps be called the individuality of the particular system of
law in question, if indeed any such fragment remained. The
case most apt to be mentioned, that of continental European law
in the first half of last century, would, I imagine, easily yield to
statement in terms of the pressures within a dominant class or
set of classes.
CHAPTER XVII
POLITICAL PARTIES
With thf political parties we come to phenomena which show
us public oi)inion and leadership, the discuss'ion and organization
phases of governmental activity, in closer contact than we have at
any time thus far seen them. But even this chapter will not take
us to the bottom of the analysis of their relationship; it is only one
more step on the way.
Whether the political party in its developed permanent form is
or is not in formal classifications listed as an agency of government
on a level with the three stand-bys is a relatively unimportant
matter. The important facts to observe are that continuing parties,
organized outside of the legislature, bear a relation to the people
who compose them, or more precisely to the group interests that
function through them, which is in type similar to the felalioh
which a legislature or other branch of the government itself bears
to interest groups ; and further that they bear a relation to executive,
legislature, or judiciary, similar to the relations these bear to
one another.
It is no objection to this view to say that embryonic parties
(are everywhere observable which are clearly not such established
agencies. Apart from the fact that the three generally recognized
agencies themselves evolve from simple and irregular forms, there
is the further fact that embryonic forms of governmental process
are observable all around us in modern life, whether we look at
lynching parties, at organized vigilance societies, at international
law, at neighborhood improvement societies, at fraternal societies,
or at associated industrial management.
Nor is it an objection to say that parties are not agencies of
government because they are not legally organized and legally
recognized. Apart from the fact that legal recognition and organi-
zation is rapidly being given to the parties in the American states,
400
POLITICAL PARTIES 401
we must remember that some of the most important historical
governing agencies have not been organized (in this terminology)
in the law, but above the law. The German political scientist
who would most strenuously object to treating the party as of
"staatlichen Charakter" would not think of excluding the monarch
on the same ground. If any legal test be applied it must be that
of activity, not that of the jurist's formalism.
Parties may be found which are best to be described as the ^
special organization for pohtical activity of interest groups, espe- f-
cially of classes, direct. Others are rather the organization in a ;/
representative degree of a set of such interest groups. Certain
parties in Russia at the present stage of the revolution (1906)
have at times taken such forms that for some purposes they may
be regarded not as agencies of the government or of interest groups
in the government, but rather as partly developed substitute
governments. Parties in Germany are comparatively close to
the interest groups, and even the socialist party, the largest of
them all, is not to be described effectively as an agency of govern-
ment, though this is partly because the Reichstag itself is not a
very securely seated agency. Parties in France are of dilTcrent
value according as one looks upon the ever-transforming "bloc"
and the opposition as the parties, or gives attention to the minor
constituent parties. Big party changes in the control of the French
government have been usually revolutions, while small party
regroupings are of almost yearly occurrence. I shall return to
these in the attempt to specify more clearly the nature of these
groups. In Cuba the two parties are perhaps well enough defined
to be called agencies, even though, or rather because, they have
worked through revolution ; and in the revolutionary South Ameri-
can states, the parties, that is the rival hordes of politicians with
their armies, are the predominating agencies of government. In
England, where progress is perhaps toward a government with
cabinet and parties as its main agencies, the parties are steadily
advancing in their organization outside of Parliament. In the
United States our massive parties with their permanent organiza-
tion, seen not only at elections and between elections with a view
402 'I III: PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
to fk'ctoral work, but in permanent bureaus for the control of
IcgisLitures, for the {lisix)sal of favors, and the dictation of executive
acts, are fully formed agencies, sometimes even making one or
mori' of the constitutional agencies mere clerks and messengers.
So Tammany Hall, in power or out of power, is in fact delegated
to do much of the work of government for New York City. The
city-state of Florence in the Middle Ages, especially with its
Capitani di Parte Guclfa, gives us good illustrations of parties
iwhich became regular organs of government and at times even
Ithc most important organs of government.
If an executive, say, actually represented "all the people,"
that is the totality of the society, and a party did not, a distinction
could be made. But my analysis hitherto has shown how the
totality never appears, unless indeed it is totality in the special
sense of one society against another, as one nation in war or
diplomacy against another. The executive is buoyed up on certain
groups or combinations of groups, not ruthlessly pushing toward the
untrammeled realization of their ends, but allowing for resistance
in other groups and bringing about in that way a balance, varying
in stabihty from time to time. In much the same way the party
machine will represent some interests more directly than others,
allow for the others as far as it needs, and work out in this way a
balance. Neither the lack of w^hat is called " control by the people"
in the executive nor a similar lack in the party, nor any difference
in tlie degree of control at any time provides any fundamental
distinction, however important such matters are as tests for the
distinction of one agency from the other, or as issues in the practical
political problems of the time.
The party agency is of course a double, or in still higher degree
compound, structure, one branch rising and the other falling, and
then later the positions being reversed. In this it has its peculiar
characteristic, but perhaps not more peculiar than is to be found
in a double consulship, one consul commanding the army one
day and the other the next, or in a double legislature, one branch
alternatmg with the other in irregular struggle according as the
interests express themselves through them.
POLITICAL PARTIES 403
One can hardly discuss parties without introducting Burke's
definition that a party is "a body of men united for promoting by
their joint endeavors the national interest upon some particular
principle on which they are all agreed." Here is a definition in
terms of the "national interest" and of a "particular principle."
But the "national interest" is rather a form of argument used by
party members, than a characteristic of party tendency. It is a
phrase which stands in a representative capacity to the special
interest groups composing the party, and at the same time aims
to reconcile other group interests to the proposed policy. And
the "particular principle" is stated on the intellectual side, rather
than concretely as the party tendency; it serves to indicate the
presence of the party interest with its tendency, rather than to
define it. Writers who accept this definition frequently mention
"real political parties based on differences of opinion, not on class
interests," their distinction being of course arbitrary, so far as it
purports to be theoretical, since there can be no opinion which
does not reflect interests or which has any value apart from interests.
It is evident that before we can understand parties we must
push our analysis far deeper than words of this character will
take us; not because such definitions as Burke's are incorrect, but
because they are highly superficial. We must start out with that
first phrase of Burke's definition, the "body of men," which seems
so matter of course, and hold fast to it all the way through. We
shall have to trace the representative quality of party in all its
grades, from ordinary language expressions to organized political
structure. We shall have to get the policies stated in terms of policy
groups and show how these represent underlying interest groups,
and how the mass gets knit together into great permanent organized
structures, and how leadership, both of the policy type and of the
machine type, appears in this mass, and how this structure as it
forms develops "opportunities" for exploitation, in which appear
new interest groups, which may be characterized as organization
or machine interests. We must get the whole thing stated in
terms of interest groups, measured by the numbers and interest
intensity of their members.
404 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
Suppose wc look at party formation in very simple conditions.
Lrt us take a Spartan election by volume of applause or an Indian
trilx- considering a migration, a hunt, or a war expedition. We
find first of all that the party phenomenon, that is, the taking of
sides or the division of opinion, occurs in a bed or background of
general activity. If there were no group differentiation within
this general activity, there would be no division of opinion, no
party formation at all. The group formation under the particular
exigency is, however, so immediate that it seems the same thing
as the party; that is, the party represents it immediately and
directly. No doubt with fuller information we could carry our
analysis back into health, food supply, and age conditions in such
a matter as the plan for the hunting expedition; or in the Spartan
election we might be able to discover several elements of the popula-
tion which combined gave one candidate his preponderance in
number and loudness of voices over another canditate. As it
stands, however, we have a simple, transitory party formation,
representing immediately the interest groupings of the society.
We can extend the illustration in which discussion groups are
the only representative methods needed for the mediation of the
interests a little way without producing any change in the party
formation; as, for example, by taking cases in which a more
protracted discussion is necessary, with urging and pleading on
both sides. But we should soon reach a point at which we should
find the party formation changing character and taking on more
definite organization. This would be a result of the character
of the interest groupings, of the character of the opposition between
them, and of their complexity; factors which in their turn would
depend mainly on the compression of the population in its environ-
ment. We should find for instance cases in which a policy in
two steps would be set up, and here the realization of the policy
would involve a continuing leadership, differentiated out of the
party, to give it consistency and hold it together during the progress
of its activity. The phenomenon which I have indicated by the
phrase a "policy in two steps" is itself not to be thought of as a
mere bit of head work by the leaders. Rather it itself is the out-
POLITICAL PARTIES 405
growth of the underlying group basis and determined in every
respect by it. It is a function, partly of the larger party opposition,
and partly of the group factors in relation to which the parties stand
in a representative capacity. If the party leaders see that they
can take step A now but not step B, and that after the readjust-
ment brought about through step A the groups will be so arranged
that step B will be possible, they set up that for their programme.
They get their programme out of the groupings which they reflect,
and only so far as they reflect the underlying situation correctly,
by chance or by skill, will their policy work itself forward. So
far as they reflect the situation wrongly, or have misjudged relative
pressures, they will fail. I have used a phrasing that makes the
leaders the subjects and directors of the operation, but again
merely for convenience in the brief statement. It is the group
process that works through them upon which we must concentrate
attention in studying each case.
However, this second stage, simple as it seems, is, as I have
stated it here, merely schematic. Whether or not we get this
second type of party will depend on the structure of the govern-
ment in which the interest groups are functioning, or in other
words upon the work that is to be done. Whether the interest
groups have hardened into classes or not, and what form of repre-
sentation exists in the central agencies of the government, and
whether all classes are independently represented in the govern-
ment or approach the government by discussion groups of their
own, will determine the concrete transformations.
Nevertheless, without substantial error we can analyze the
elements of such an organized party a little farther without coming
to concrete illustrations. As it stands, with some specialized
leadership and with a programme which requires some time to
carry through, it furnishes an agency through which still other
policies — that is, tendencies of activity — may push themselves
forward. There may be a different set of underlying groups,
which nevertheless coincide as to personnel fairly well with the
groups that arc represented in the party, which also are work-
ing along toward the termini of their activities, and which
4o6 'I'FFK PROCESS OF (iOVERNMENT
tllK
ilu- existing party organization the easiest channel through
which to express themselves. With a development Hke this the
organized leadership of the party will gain a more independent,
or rather a more diiTercntiated, position; it will increase the element
of (Hscrelion in its mode of representing the underlying groups,
now become more complex than before. If this process continues
to any great extent, we shall find developing in the party what
we may call personality groups. A leader will gather a following
around him which will work with him and by means of which
he can adjust the emphasis which the different lines of activity
receive at different times. With this we do not get to an entirely
different type of party phenomena, nor to a type which can, any
better than the former, be adequately described in terms of a
person's "qualities." We have a different cross-section of the
party and a process different in some of its details, but still one
which is itself a group phenomenon, and which can only be given
its value in terms of the underlying groups. Or again, if the leader-
ship of the party becomes so organized under conditions that
offer opportunities for exploitation based on circumstances that
arise out of the very fact of the party's existence and of the political
and other phenomena in which it exists, we may get a machine
type of grouping across the party, with an interest which, although
in one sense created by the party as an organization, is yet itself
to be assimilated in type to the underlying groups which the
party represents. It adds an important underlying group to the
others, which may under peculiar circumstances come to appear
the most prominent feature of the party organization; that is,
it may develop abuses which arouse very vigorous groups in opposi-
tion to it, and which denounce it in unmeasured terms. Neverthe-
less, it will always be merely one among the many interest groupings
to be considered in a full statement of the complex situation.
In this progress from the simplest to the most developed forms,
the change concerns first the directness or remoteness of the
representativeness of the party, and second the development of
strict party, or organization, or machine interest groupings, which
work through the wide party organization much as underlying
POLITICAL PARTIES 407
interest groups do. These phenomena in their developed form
are sometimes described as the "personality" of the party, but it
must now be apparent on the surface that such a manner of
speech tends toward obscurity, and that the method of analyzing
the situation for all the forms of groupings in their various relations
holds out on the contrary hope of clear and exact understanding.
The content of the party struggles is infinitely various. With
that we are not concerned, but it is desirable now to note one other
phase of the progress for which somewhat more concrete illustra-
tion is necessary; that is, the loosing of the parties from a class
backing, and their acquisition of powers of freer functioning as the
representative agents of many-sided, criss-cross groups in the
developed political process.
In our simple tribe in which we find no class oppositions the
party is fugitive and functions freely. When a split has come and
the government rests on one class as against another or several
others, held in place under a reign of custom, we shall find, so
long as the government runs smoothly, that is, so long as all the
class interests are fairly well reflected by the governing class,
that party formations attract attention only inside the government
class. There they may be numerous, or they may be somewhat
consolidated and relatively permanent, appearing perhaps as
personality groups, struggling within the class for immediate
control of power. If it comes to pass that the classes enter into
sharp opposition because of abuses in the government, each class
may take on a poUtical organization, that is form a party which
represents it in the struggle The Boer governments, which have
been called governments without parties, might better be called
governments in which a small, compact, homogeneous class
was itself the dominating party, under conditions which discouraged
both party splits within the class and the formation of opposition
political parties in the dominated class.
When we take the despotic monarchy, there again the party
formation will be within the class upon which the monarchy is
directly based, while the other classes have their interests more or
less adequately reflected for them in the dominant class, without
4o8 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
forming parties of their own to re[)resent them. Should the
(Kspotism he a [jowerful central organization resting on an army
to hokl together a number of antagonistic districts, the parties
may appear within the army in the form of cliques or factions.
Again, when a (Hstrict rebels it will have its own party representa-
tion, or if a military leader contests for the central power by the
aid of his legions he may have a local support organized to some
extent in party form. If the central despotism does not need the
direct strength of the army, because perhaps of outside pressure
which holds the difTerent districts in one system, then district parties
may ai)pear, or perhaps class parties within each district may
strive to influence the central government. In all these cases
the form of the parties and their manner of acting will be deter-
mined by class and group considerations. The possibilities of
leadership must be worked out upon such considerations. The
possibilities of success and failure of any set of tendencies must
be based in the same way.
Let us turn now to modern England. Party phenomena are
of course as old as the nation, but the political parties as we now
know them trace their beginnings back about two hundred years,
to the time when the group process ceased to show itself as an
opposition between the king and his strength on one side and the
ParHament and its strength on the other, and began to work through
both king and Parliament acting jointly. I do not mean that there
was any particular moment when this change came about, nor
that there was no such joint procedure of king and commons long
before that time, nor that there has been no sharp opposition
between the two as aligned each with a different set of group
(perhaps class) interests since that time. The general lines of
the change are however clear enough, and are marked at various
stages of development by the selection of ministers from the
Parhament, then from one party in Parliament, and finally by their
joint responsibility to the House of Commons.
For a time with the limited range of participants in the actual
government, the parties as organized in Parliament were primarily
personal follo^^^ngs. The phrase, "the \Yhig families," which
POLITICAL PARTIES 409
one so often hears, stands for this fact. The changing needs
of the groups of which the population was made up reflected
themselves through these parhamentary party groups, and through
the king, who exercised for a long time a certain representative
power as the chooser between the factions. We had during this
period organized permanent parties acting in the government,
representing wide groups of interests, although not periodically
chosen by these interest groups or parties made up out of them
direct, and cohering together mainly by the use of the patronage,
which was very rich, and sometimes by direct bribery, the funds
for which came from the same source as the salaries of the place-
men, namely the national treasury.
Now when it came about that a group interest demanding an
extension of the suffrage had won the first two or three stages of
its demands, a party organization outside of the Parhament at
once appeared, an organization of the electorate of a primitive
kind. This organization followed the lines of the two-party
organization inside of Parliament, though the strong group interest
of Ireland has given it a party of its own, and though the other
parties have had severe shocks from sharp spUts on this and other
questions. At present a labor group has become strong, and an
analysis of the Parliament will indicate a dozen or so fairly well-
defined party groups underneath the surface, although the sharp
rivalry between government and opposition is as clearly marked
as ever.
As soon now as we get an organization of parties outside of
the legislature we have the beginnings of a new agency of govern-
ment coming up from the same source, the group struggle, from
which the previously existing agencies came. In England this
agency docs not as yet stand nearly so independent of the Parha-
ment as parties in the United States stand of the legislatures;
the organization leaders are mainly in the Parliament personally,
and those who are in the Parhament dominate completely those
who are outside. Responsibility is still tested through parha-
mentary mechanism, but not so freely as of old. A majority does
not fade away through "convictions," or through that substitute
410 TTTF. PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
for convictions, bribe-money; it passes rather by the results of the
by-dcctions; and the more the groups develop in the two great
parlies, the more perhaps we may expect to see them acting en
masse through their extra-parliamentary organization, rather than
incHviduaily within Parliament.
The whole system is nevertheless one of groups. Of the many
group oppositions of the nation along different planes, we find
certain ones from time to time getting out of adjustment, so to
speak, or rising into vigor under new conditions of life, and forcing
themselves toward political activity. Some of these group activi-
ties will be noted by the government almost before they have clearly
formed themselves, and will be brought to success through the
discretion of the government on its own initiative, acting of course
in a representative capacity. Others again must first organize
themselves, not indeed as pohtical parties, but as discussion or
propaganda groups on a level intermediate between the immediate
interest groups and the parties proper. Still others will be forced
to affiliate themselves with the political parties and secure expres-
sion for themselves along party lines. Finally some others, fail-
ing of success, will organize parties of their own, both within
and without the Parhament, and exert themselves in that way.
Whatever be the process, however, whether through cabinet,
commons, or party, the whole situation must be worked out in
group terms to become intelligible. It must be worked out by
the analysis of the underlying group conditions, not as they ought
to be, nor as our own group tendencies may dictate them to us,
nor along any lines of justice or morality dragged in from other
situations, but solely on the Hnes of the actually given groupings,
just as they stand. Policies and arguments and "class conscious-
ness" and other such things must be taken into account as indica-
tions to help us in working out the fundamental interests on the
basis of which the whole party structure must be built up. Intensi-
ties must be taken into account for just what they can be proved
to be, not merely for what they claim to be at special stages of
their process against obstruction. No interest group can be esti-
mated at its right force except in terms of the amount of resistance
POLITICAL PARTIES 41 1
that others will offer to it. And always the party process must
be reduced to the lowest terms to which our analysis can carry us.
There is a good deal to note in the English party process which
can be noted so much better in the American parties that I will
postpone discussion of it for use in connection with the American
illustrations. But first a word or two about French parties will
be of service. Pohtical parties in France seem to be making
progress toward much the same status to which Enghsh parties
are tending, save that they are approaching from a different
direction. The "bloc" is increasing in strength and cohesiveness,
the opposition which has been in the past more an opposition to
the republic's present type of government than to the cabinet is
drawing itself within the system, so that it tends to become an
opposition in the Enghsh sense, and the groups are arranging
themselves under both. When one lists by name all the different
"parties" that appear as represented in Parhament, one sets
down more parties than can really be found. Many on the list
would be rather personal folio wings within parties than independ-
ent parties. That is, they would be groups of men whose adhesion
struck our attention more by mention of the leader's name than of
his policy, the difference, however, being strictly relative and a
matter mainly of emphasis. The interests which are lower
lying are therefore reflected differently and through a different
technique than is the case in England. So far as these many
French parties are direct organizations of interests, they secure
their ends by a process of barter with other similar groups which
compose the " bloc," the barter often including in its terms spoils
of a kind very familiar in the other countries we are considering.
So far as they are personal folio wings, they fall within larger group
territory, and furnish special tools, so to speak, through which
interests may work. The division of the socialist parties is tested
mainly by the extent to which they recognize the strength of oppos-
ing groups, which is the same thing as saying by the extent to
which they have got their programme of action clearly and fairly
opened out before them, and also by the extent to which their
members are blocked in their lives, and by the extent to which
412 TIIK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
they arc excited by tin ir failure to secure expression — which
comes to something similar to the previous point. To compare
England and France on any basis that gave hope for useful knowl-
edge, one would be compelled to get all the groups analyzed, to
note the dilTerences, to follow up the habitual forms of activity
in governmental matters, and discriminate between the channels
which were immediately commanded by interest oppositions, and
those which are indifferently used by the interest groups because
they hajipen to be present and can be followed without such notice-
able obstruction as to stir up active effort for their alteration.
\Vlien the United States became a federal government the
suffrage was limited, and the voters were organized under leaders
transmitted from the earlier days. The fields in which these
leaders had won their standing had been either the Revolutionary
War, or the constitutional convention and its predecessor, the
Congress of the Confederation. Discussion leadership and organiza-
tion leadership were not well differentiated. On account of the
limitation of the suffrage it is necessary to take into account in
studying the parties not only their membership, but also the non-
voting interests which they represented to some considerable
extent. The folio wings of the leaders were grouped in the main
territorially, but with outlying detachments that extended well
over the country.
It is well enough established that the party differentiation of
the early years of the Republic cannot be more than superficially
defined in terms of the theories of the leaders, such as their theories
for and against a strong central government. Those theories
served for little more than tags to the parties, as was well enough
proved when Jefferson used the strong hand at the central place
of power in defiance of all his theories. Henry Jones Ford, one
of the most searching observers among waiters on American politics,
follows John Marshall in coimecting the parties with the previous
experiences of the two groups of leaders, and he emphasizes the
relations between Hamilton and the commercial interests of the
country on the one side and Jefferson and the agricultural interests
POLITIC.-VL PARTIES 413
on the other. This latter distinction ofifcrs a valuable clue in the
attempt to determine what the underlying interest groups were
for which the parties stood, how far the parties represented them
adequately, and how through the development of the country and
by compromise as the result of party struggle, adjustments were
brought about and the group lines changed.
While party outlines were indicated at this time in terms of
elaborate theories, and while the party process seemed to be
largely a discussion process, the inadequacies of such a point of
view should be noted by anyone who believes that a governmment
by pure, calm discussion is the normal type by which we must
test the divergences of all government as we find it. Discussion
assumed most violent forms even at the start, and it is a question
not for theorizing but for exact examination, with due allowance
for the extension of the suffrage and for the character of the
interest opposition of the time, whether the groups gained better
balance through the govenment then than they do even now, when
machine organization at its strongest is fresh in memory.
At the start the parties seemed to be mainly organized in Con-
gress, but their lines could be seen on both sides stretching into
the executive departments — that is, in the first part of Washington's
presidency — while the state governments also furnished a field for
organization. And indeed not all of the active leaders were to be
found inside of the official positions. The congressional caucuses
for the presidency indicate the location of the strongest organiza-
tion.
We can observe first the parties as organized in the state
governmeiTts contesting with Congress for the nominating power;
and then later, with the rapid extension of the sufi"rage, the result
of group struggles that went on in the state fields without rising
into federal politics, and with the increase in number of elective
offices, we observe the parties organizing themselves outside of
both state and federal governments, and arriving finally at the
convention system and the party committees.
Looking at this development along another line, we see the
two-party system at the beginning; we see this system breaking
414 llli: I'KOCKSS OF GOVERNMENT
down by the Ixid defeat of one party, aad the absorption of its
interests into the other party; we see groups forming within this
dominant i)arty on personality lines at a moment when no well-
dilini'd underlying grouj) struggle was at an acute stage in federal
alTairs, and we see those personality groups forming the basis
for a new representation of underlying interest groups as they
began to press more eagerly for recognition in the government
process. So we find, for example, the interest groups which were
represented on the discussion plane by the tariff and internal-
improvements policies operating through the government. Finally
in the slavery issue, which formed very strong interest groups in
the economic field, unfortunately for the country divided on terri-
torial lines, and which was represented in the discussion field by
intense outbursts of "moral fervor" built up complexly out of
many elements, we see the party technique transforming itself
into war technique. In this process the dominant party in the
North came to seem a thing of pure policy, of pure morals and
ideas, but that, of course, was only its superficial appearance.
It is as a great mass of men with their interest groupings solidified
into a huge sectional, class interest that the phenomenon of the
Republican party must be examined, and not merely as an abstract
economic, or as an abstract moral phenomenon.
Now when the war was over the Republican party stood power-
fully organized in possession of the government. It was a mighty
machine, so strongly intrenched that not for ten years did another
party gain so much as a single house of Congress. It was an
organization which administered the government and which stood
seemingly by its own strength, when the underlying interests
which had raised it up subsided. It was an engine ready for the
use of interest groups which needed to push themselves toward
realization through government.
Long before this De Tocqueville had commented upon the
possibilities of party organization in this respect, calling it "a
government within the government," and saying that "if in imme-
diate contiguity to the directing power, another power be estab-
lished, which exercises almost as much moral authority as the
POLITICAL PARTIES 415
former, it is not to be believed that it will long be content to speak
without acting."' Also he had discussed the use of spoils as party
fodder, place-hunting as a trade. ^
The history of the use of spoils in our politics both before De
Tocqueville's time and after is well enough known: how the party,
once organized outside the legislature as an agency of government,
•pressed itself into the government offices, not because Jackson was
a bad man, but because of the inevitable process of groups of
men and their opportunities; how the evils of the system in time
stirred up a group antagonism to them, which we now know as the
civil-service reform movement (I do not refer to the pious
ejaculations of the excluded, but to the representation that came
into being on behalf of the injured) ; how as a result of this antago-
nism we have the civil-service merit system of the present; and
how, we may add, the measure of civil-service reform obtained up
to the present has already produced a certain definite enough
alteration in machine strength, despite the fact that large amounts
of other varieties of spoils are still left for machines to thrive on.
This spoils system operated here as elsewhere to hold the
party leaders from big to little together in a strong interest group,
which came, on the lines of an analysis I have previously set forth,
to be more like an underlying interest group than like a strict
party formation on a representative level. The party stood forth
rather as an agency of government than as a party in the terms
of such a definition as Burke's. The Republican party I have
named merely because it has been the most striking instance of
this kind of organization. While the Democratic party approaches
it in many respects, its chronic position as the "opposition" in
national affairs makes it a less perfect illustration of the type.
Let me sum up the main features of the party as it now stands
in the United States. It is an organization of voters, brought
together to act as a representative of the underlying interest groups
in which these voters, and to some lesser extent other citizens,
present themselves. On the level of discussion groups it is repre-
I Democracy in America., Part, I, chap. xii.
' Ibid., Part II, Book III, chap. xx.
41 6 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
scnti'd, or rather underlying groups arc represented, by many
theories, policies, and slogans; it has, indeed, a formally differen-
tiated discussion phase, the platform, which offers the pretense of
coherence and positive leadership on the discussion plane, but
which, as every schoolboy knows, is most of the time a hollow
mockery, which means merely that in the discussion plane, in
the platform, the underlying groups are not accurately represented.
Its leadership is a strong, though not an especially close, corpora-
tion, reaching its most compact form in New York's Tammany
Hall, and indeed actually a legal corporate form in the eruptive
Hearst's Independence League; a characteristic so marked that
one writer a dozen years ago used the phrase "government by
syndicate" to describe it. Upon this quasi-corporate organization
of the electorate the group interests of the country which are
exerting themselves in the political field, must direct their efforts
to secure results. They have indeed still the legislatures upon
which to bring pressure to bear, and also they can exert themselves
through the presidency, but in the same way they must exert
themselves on the corporative party organization if they wish
results. Of course, all group interests do not work with equal
facility through these different agencies. When the presidency
is called "the people's oflSce," that means that big widespread
group interests, equipped with comparatively poor technique
represented mainly on discussion lines, have been able to find
expression through that office better than elsewhere. The adjust-
ments that are carried on through the legislature vary greatly
with different legislative bodies. In the lower house of Congress,
the members adjust local demands for spoils in the form of build-
ings, improvements, and to some extent jobs, but the speaker,
who with his two lieutenants decides most important questions,
is more representative of the party organized outside the legislature
than of the party as organized within it. Through the machines
go all matters which can be handled with a view to their corporate
interests, whether by bribery, favoritism, political prospects, or
otherwise. Of course the machines have limits to their utilization
of their corporate opportunities, limits set always by the possible
POLITICAL PARTIES 4^7
stimulation of group interests directly attacking them. In short
th^machine is a group among groups, a group which mediates
between others, and which reflects others with varying degrees of
adequacy; a group whose origin, whose present standing, and whose
future fate are all functions of the strength of the pressures in
the given society as it stands. The analogy between the boss with
his machine and a despot with his favorites is not fanciful but
close, both as regards class or group support and the machine's
own interests as such. The existence of the great party agencies
does not, of course, do away with the lesser party phenomena.
A special complex of interest groups, reacting on a special "evil,"
may organize a prohibition party, and many transitory party
phenomena may flit across the bosom of the great party organiza-
tion. All must be allowed for in the total.
It has been argued by Mr. Ford and by Professor Goodnow
that the parties as we now see them were made necessary by the
separation of powers in our government, by the separation of
executive and legislature, and by the separation of federal from
state and also in part of state from local governments. The
analysis that brought this connection to light was very valuable,
but even at that it remains an incomplete statement of the party
phenomenon. There is no doubt that a group interest seeking
expression through party activity would be compelled to operate
upon executive and legislature at the same time, and in case
both state and federal governments had to act, upon both of
these. Moreover with divided elections and only gradual achieve-
ment of control, the party organization outside the legislature and
executive would have to be maintained for considerable periods.
But that our machine type of political organization would necessarily
follow is a different question, only to be answered by bringing all
the group interests including that excited by the spoils opportunities
into accurate comparison. Where we find spoils showing a dis-
integrating rather than an integrating effect, that must be taken
into account, and also where we find rival parties by trading
dividing the fields in which they rule, that fact must be laid against
the theory of unity by party. In so far also as we find party an
4i8 'Flir: PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
agency for any and every interest group, or rather for selected
interest groups of varying characters, to function through, instead
of an agency for the representation of one great interest or set of
interests, we must viev^r it as such. When we find an interest
group appearing to denounce the party machines, it is no answer
to it, nor does it really bear on the situation, to argue that the
machines are necessary, spoils and all, because of any work they
may do or may have done in holding the organs of government
together. If the machine hurts enough, the reaction on it will
come just in proportion to relative strengths, argument or no
argument, past services or no past services; and whether it wipes
out merely the abuses or wipes out the machines along with the
abuses will be largely a matter of detail, depending, however,
itself on relative group strengths. And if there is a large fund of
genuine work — that is work which must continue to be done,
and which other agencies do not properly provide for — the very-
existence of the work will produce the mechanism to do it. A
theoretical discussion then of the responsibihty or lack of responsi-
bility of the machine to the people will amount to much or to
little, just in proportion as it reflects at their accurate weights the
group forces which are now struggling to expression.
Before leaving this subject, there are a few incidental matters
concerning parties which need discussion. Perhaps I have
already considered at sufficient length the relation of formally
expressed policies to party activity, but at the risk of repetition I
will go over the point again. Like all "theory," policy has its
place in the process as bringing out group factors into clearer
relation, and as holding together the parties, once they are formed,
by catchwords and slogans. So far as it gives good expression
to the groups on its peculiar plane, all is clear. But to attempt
to judge the parties by their theories or formal policies is an eternal
absurdity, not because the parties are weak or corrupt and desert
their theories, but because the theories are essentially imperfect
expressions of the parties. The vicissitudes of states' rights as a
doctrine are well enough known. Another passing illustration
POLITICAL PARTIES 419
concerns the government regulation of commerce. If we may
identify the commercial interests of a century ago with those of
today for the purposes of illustration, we find that the very elements
which then under Hamilton's leadership were most eager to extend
the power of government over commerce are now the most bitterly
opposed to any such extension. Then and now the argument
made great pretenses to logic and theoretical cocksureness, and
then, as now, the theories were valuable in the outcome only as
rallying the group forces on one side or the other for the contest.
Public opinion, which is a phenomenon on the level of the
discussion groups, is directly connected with party in many ways.
It must submit to analysis and to tests for the degree of its repre-
sentativeness like any other similar group expression. Sometimes
it is a compound of discussion group elements, and again it is
vivified by striking roots directly into the deeper-lying groups.
It has enormous power, of course, but only where it expresses
interest groups that mean business. The test of it is an operation
of extreme delicacy in the hurly-burly of poUtical life, and every
successful politician is an expert in it, which is not the same as
saying that he gives obedience to the opinion that purports to
represent "all the people," but that he can estimate the opinion
of the groups in which he is most strongly seated for what it is
worth, and that he can use the public opinion from outside groups
to test their true strength as against his own fortified position.
When he fails in his reaction to the group interests as mediated
through opinion, a change in leadership is quickly due. Leader-
ship mainly on the discussion plane and leadership mainly on the
organization plane are of course both found in the pohtical process,
and they may work together or work against each other at various
stages of the process. The "Zeitgeist" is a spook that comes to
light in the study of public opinion, when the tendency of the
investigation is to individualize and personify it, not to analyze it
to see what it actually represents. It may safely be asserted that
any definite tendencies of action which are attributed to the
"Zeitgeist" may surely and exactly be reduced to the underlying
groups from which "Zeitgeist" derives his being, and that what
420 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
will be left of him after analysis will be mainly trivialities and
misrepresentations, in short, interesting but insignificant phenomena.
It is common to classify political parties as reactionary, con-
servative, and radical or progressive. Sometimes the reactionary
is omitted and the classification is reduced to conservative and
radical. Or again liberal and radical may be distinguished from
one another. It should be apparent how extremely superficial
such a basis of distinction is. Such names are indeed used by
actual parties, and as names they have their reality. Also the
parties so designated or classified may sometimes correspond to
actual class-interest groups in a particular society; where they
do it is proper to use this classification of parties, but only for the
given time and place with reference to the given groups. WTien
we come to the phenomena of the great party organizations which
are agencies in government the names do not correspond at all
to the facts. Indeed, under any circumstances w^hatever we can
easily see that no party can be really " reactionary." A party must
inevitably be looking to the future. Just because in the discussion
plane there is much said about the "good old times," it does not
mean that the party really tends backward. It is hke every other
bit of human activity tending forward, and we must use the talk
and ideals and theories as indications from which to proceed to
our analysis of the actual underlying interest groups. It may be
that these groups in eariier times had much freer sway in the
society and are still unreconciled to their present position, in the
sense that their tendencies of activity are extreme and uncom-
promising. Really, however, such a party is radical, just as much
as parties that call themselves radical, perhaps even more radical
in some cases.
Some parties can of course be on the defensive, and all parties
may be at some time. But even the distinction between the offen-
sive and the defensive is a somewhat superficial one, when we
turn our attention to the groups at the bottom of the process.
Both offensive and defensive parties are pressing fonvard on
certain hnes of activity and are pressing against each other in the
process. From this point of view it is rather a technical than a
POLITICAL PARTIES 421
substantial difference whether one party is aiming to change a
statute and the other to maintain it, or vice versa. The practical
distinction between the party in control of the government and
the party of the "outs" of course stands, but the point is that the
party of the "ins" may be maintaining an established law, or it
may be changing it; and both parties are exerting the strength
they represent for all it is worth in whichever direction the process
of adjustment is moving. Or again, in still other words, the move-
ment of readjustment, even in the most spectacular times, is
comparatively slight compared with the great mass of the pressures
exerted by all the underlying groups upon each other.
Special varieties of the kind of classification I have just been
criticizing are to be found when liberal, conservative, and socialist
parties, for example (Kautsky), are set over against one another,
each with its ideals, liberal, feudal, or socialistic, and each resting
on a class of the population, capitalists, land-owners, or laborers.
Such a classification may or may not be proper at any given time
or place, but to erect the three so-called classes into permanent
elements of the population and make them apply in all societies
of the modern type, is a mere bit of metaphysics or pretentious
schematism. And it can never take higher rank until direct proof
is brought which rests not on the "ideals" but on independently
established social groupings, which distinguish betT\'een ordinary
groups and set classes with great care, and which get the whole
stated as it actually is in the governing process and nowhere
else. Loria, for instance, can work out a beautiful theory of the
parties as based on the "revenues," and it will look attractive at
long range ; but wherever a disinterested student attempts to apply
it to his own time and country, he will find much better methods of
analyzing the phenomena than that.
Taking now a final look at the party process, we find classes
sometimes opposed to each other with the government established
in the hands of one class, and with a party formation on personal
or policy lines among that ruhng class, or among its leaders. We
find that where the classes have been to great extent broken down,
so that the functioning through the government is of groups of
422 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
less fixed types, there parties will form to represent the groups in
the political field, varying in extent and in organization according
with the arrangement of the government and the supplementary
work to be done. We find tliese parties with representation in
the discussion field, and with organizations that represent them and
furnish them leadership, and with various mixed forms of repre-
sentation, such as special organization of propaganda. We find
their intensity dependent upon the intensity of the group pressures,
which include of course the amount of the obstruction as well
as the amount of the demand. We fmd intensity in the discussion
level often out of proportion to the intensity of the group pres-
sures, and we must allow for that at all times in our judgments
of the situation. We find the party organizations adding a new
underlying interest which must always be taken into account and
at times very acutely. We find the formal policies and theories
of parties in varying degrees of representativeness, some of them
maintaining themselves for protracted periods and becoming such
ingrained habits on the discussion level that they survive there for
considerable periods after the group interests underlying them
have so shifted that they are no longer adequately represented
by them. We find the theories entitled to attribution of potency
in direct proportion to the adequacy with which they represent
the underlying interests; with allowance only for the dregs and
driblets of theory left behind, pretentious but with trifling potency,
in transition periods. We find the whole process masquerading
itself in the phraseology of the "public interest or welfare," which
is a something non-existent except on the discussion level, save in
times of a violent opposition of one nation as a whole to some other
or others, in which case it represents not the whole society under
consideration but only the particular nation as one group in the
larger society in which the interaction — war, tariff dispute, or
what not — is going on.
And above all we find that the great need at every stage in our ex-
amination of the process is for a careful analysis of all the group
operations, and for a thoroughgoing statement of the most superficial
and pretentious in terms of the deeper-lying and most fundamental.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE ELECTORATE AND SEMI-POLITICAL GROUPS
Passing behind the party organization we come to the electorate,
out of which the parties are composed. Theoretical legal dis-
tinctions will help us here even less than elsewhere; they serve
merely to define details around the edges of established activity.
The Praetorian guard in its flower under the Roman Empire
certainly formed an electorate. The Russian people, down even
to the most oppressed of the peasants and the Jews, are attempting
today according to their needs and their technique to exercise
electoral functions. France at the time of the revolution developed
a great electorate. On the other hand negroes in southern states
with constitutional "rights" which they are kept from exercising,
are not for us part of the real electorate. It is all a question of
activity.
To use these illustrations is not to become involved in any
confusion with regard to the suffrage as we find it permanently
organized with the ballot as its instrument under complex govern-
ments of the representative type. In this latter case wc have an
electorate not spasmodically and irregularly working, but organized
for periodical action with a definite technique. In a country like
the United States it is probably entitled just as it stands, as so
much "voting cattle," or "intelligent citizenship," whichever
one will, to be ranked as one of the great agencies of government;
and this even apart from its organization into parties. But
whether it is so characterized or not is a minor matter. The
important thing is to get it in proper relation to all the other
processes of government.
The electorate functions through majorities or pluralities.
When the majority or plurality has registered itself we say the
"people" has spoken, or has "decided," but that is a bit of per-
sonification, of phrase-making. What we actually have is an
423
424 11 no PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
adjustmcnl or solution of oppositions, by a certain technical
method which is entitled to be taken exactly for what it is, and for
nothing more. It is not a du-ect adjustment of fundamental
interests. The electorate, like every other grouping of the popu-
lation in the governmental field, is itself representative in the
sense in which that term has been used throughout this book.
It is a diflerentkited activity. Its groups represent underlying
groups, more or less adequately. If anyone is interested in passing
judgment upon it as a "good" or a "bad" institution, the only
way to reach a sane judgment is — after fixing exactly the purpose
for which the judgment is desired — to reduce the electorate to terms
of tlic underlying interests with as great a degree of exactness as
available facts and methods will permit.
Sometimes the electorate passes judgment upon men and
sometimes upon measures. Sometimes, that is, it elects persons
to oflice, and sometimes it votes directly upon questions of policy.
But the distinction is not a hard and fast one, good for fundamental
scientific uses. A man cannot be selected or judged entirely
without reference to the policy he represents or embodies. Even
if "character" is set up as a test, that also is a matter of policy,
since character as such in the election can cut no figure except
with reference to what the man of given character will be or do
in the government; honesty or dishonesty here is a matter of the
use of the public funds or franchise; private moral life, where
it counts, has to do in part wdth law-enforcement and in part with
"example" in the broader field of control, w^hile for the rest it
may have bearings on personality groupings; even personal
popularity is a question of the personality-leadership groups.
Similarly a policy cannot be passed on save with reference to the
men who are to embody it. In the discussion field, now^ person
and now policy may get the greater emphasis, but the material
we actually have to observe alw^ays includes both. How^ever
express they are, however merely implied in discussion, in fact
both are together. What the distinction comes dowTi to in its
I jpractical political use is that policy on the one side and character
on the other serve in the discussion level to represent different
ELECTORATE AND SEMI-POLITICAL GROUPS 425
phases of the underlying group process. They are not different
things for any scientific investigation, however sharply opposed
they may be in some immediate political struggle.
We have next to observe the relation of the electorate, not to
the other agencies of government, but to the mass of the citizen-
ship. The electorate never includes the whole citizenship. Always
the minors are excluded, and usually all of the women. The
criminal and insane elements of the population are excluded, and
in most large modern states also some portion of the other adult
males who cannot conform to fixed property or educational
qualifications. In the United States property qualifications exist
in some states, while on the other hand in many states they have
been entirely abandoned, and indeed the electorate has been
broadened to include males who are not, by legal definition,
citizens. All of these tests and qualifications are themselves the
direct result of group pressures.
Ignoring such minor peculiarities as the one last mentioned,
we have to observe in general terms that the electorate is a repre-
sentative institution in two different ways. In the first place, as
so much political activity, it represents the other activities of its
members in the way indicated a page or two back; the justi-
fication for discriminating between the electoral activity and
the underlying activities of those same persons being that they
group themselves differently on the two levels. The groupings
of the electorate activity proper, led by party organizations differen-
tiated out of them, are few in number compared with the complex
underlying groupings.
In the next place the electorate, now most readily envisaged
as a concrete body of men, represents the interests of those other
elements of the population who do not directly participate in it.
We have here something akin to the class as distinguished from
groups in the wider sense. Take the case of the women who do
not have the suffage. As the case now stands, women- interest
groups are not very markedly differentiated from men-interest
groups. The famUy, even in its greatly weakened form, serves
to keep the votes of the men in general such that they represent
426 Till': rkocKSS of government
the women interests in a fairly adequate form. Where women's
interests push themselves out in any noticeable degree as distinct
from men's, or where they show themselves in specialized forms,
as is' sometimes the case with the conduct of the public schools —
remember, I am not talking of what ought to be, but of interests
as actually manifested— the women may break through to partial
participation in the suffrage in that particular field. The more the
family organization transforms itself and the more the women
come to stand apart from the men, the more certain will be their
speedy direct participation in the suffrage. This is not saying
that there is any "reason" why they should not participate directly
in the general suffrage now, or w^hy they should. It is only pointing
to an habitual suffrage system, grown out of earlier conditions,
and lacking as yet any sufficient impetus to its transformation.
Similarly, there are the males who do not have the voting
right, for lack of property or educational qualifications. They
are represented by the male voters in very fact, whether they
arc found in large numbers with somewhat varying interests,
or in smaller numbers with group interests in general identical
with the various group interests of the voters. It is to be
noted that the very conditions which make the women usually
little forceful as a group to project themselves into the suffrage,
make the male opposition likewise of little force; on the other
hand, with excluded male voters the demand for direct participa-
tion may at times take violent formes, and be met with equally
violent opposition, the resultant suffrage extensions or limitations
being the outcome of the pressures as they actually exist within
the society, the whole background and system of governmental
technique being taken into account. Sometimes we find a different
male electorate standing behind one branch of a government
from that which stands behind another branch. It is a special
result of compromise of pressures, with some indication, save
so far as it is a mere survival, of the maiatenance of class opposi-
tion, more fixed than the ordinary group oppositions, in the govern-
ment.
Attention may also here be recalled to the fact that the suffrage
ELECTORATE AND SEMI-POLITICAL GROUPS 427
is nearly everywhere now distributed on a district, or locality,
basis. Russia's recent experiments have been with a suffrage
grouped by classes, and Prussia has a survival of class distinctions
in its three-class suffrage based on property qualifications. But
usually the district is what counts. The man is an elector only
where he lives, or where his property is located. Plural voting is,
where it occurs, in practice a rather unimportant variation of
the district system. The practical convenience of this formalism
in grouping the voters is apparent, but its function in gi\'ing
representation to underlying interests and its disturbing effects
upon the representation of those interests have already been
discussed, as well as its utility to the organizers of party machines,
whereby special interests — those of the machine leaders and of
their financial backers — become represented in preponderant
degree.
Many phases of electoral technique might be touched on. The
question of the number of offices filled by direct election could be
examined from this point of view as well as from the points of
view in the preceding chapters: also the extent to which the
electorate chooses officers, whether it chooses all the officers of the
state, or whether some, as in a monarchy like Germany, are rather
co-ordinate with the electorate than resting on it, in which latter
case both the electorate and the co-ordinate officers rest on the
citizenship at large ; also the technical methods of expression, such as
secret voting by the use of the ballot, registration of voters, govern-
ment inspection of elections, and so forth. I shall not go into
details, but merely point out that in every case we have a phenom-
enon which can only be understood through an analysis of the
grouped population, and that in these cases in especial the relative
size of the whole society and also of its great groupings appears
very plainly in its causal bearings.
Passing now behind the electorate, I wish to add a few words
on the semi-political organization of the citizenship. I shall deal
here with group phenomena which are neither party phenomena
direct nor phenomena of the electorate in action, nor are they
428 THE PROCKSS OF GOVERNMENT
yet the underlying interest groupings, which, primarily to be defined
as lying entirely out of the i)olitical sphere, furnish the bases upon
which all the political structure is reared up. What I have to
deal with is the preliminary organization of these underlying
interests with a view to political operation, direct or indirect;
they form a rei)rescntative system intermediate between the
underlying interests and the suffrage and parties.
Examining these phenomena first on the discussion level, we
find many organizations engaged in propaganda of one kind or
another. The varieties of such phenomena are very rich. They
range from dreamland Utopias to railroad press bureaus with
big budgets. Indeed, these two illustrations may be well within
the outer limits, while aberrant illustrations run out to indefinite
distances in every direction. When a man writes a book to
advance some particular theory about society, he reflects in it a
certain phase of the social process, more or less truly. If his
book has any bearing, however remote, on political life, it falls
within the field before us. Now the reflection of a phase of the
social process is the same thing as the reflection of some group
interest or set of group interests. His "theory" is such a reflection.
It is such an act of "representation." x\s the book becomes
known, there gathers round it a little group, however vaguely out-
lined, however uncertain in its tenets, however inclined to criticize
sharply great portions of the theory. It is a group held together
at the kernel. It is a differentiated representation of a certain
aspect of the human groupings. The group would not form,
so far as any observation of human life that we can make informs
us, were not the conditions "there" at the start to be reflected in
this way. Once given the differentiated discussion group, then
its disappearance or its progress will be a resultant of all the rest
of the given group facts of the social life, each bit of it going into the
reckoning, not as so much dead surface, but weighted at an intensity
which is the direct expression of the oppositions actually existing
in the social groupings. We may have a very intense group of small
numbers, or a very extended group of weak intensity. It is a
question of fact, and the group must be valued at what it is in fact.
ELECTORATE AND SEMI-POLITIC\L GROUPS 429
I have used a theoretical book for this illustration. The
book is an incident to the illustration. If the group that formed
itself amounted to anything the "ideas" were almost to a certainty
"there" in the society before the book was published. The book
was merely a little bit of activity embodying them in a good form.
Perhaps the book may have furnished the catchwords, or the
particular form of the reasonings ; perhaps its author may become
a figurehead, full of fame and glory, in the movement. It is the
grouping, nevertheless, that is important, and the grouping, at
that, for just the representative value which it actually possesses.
We may find this grouping of the citizenship in many forms of
greater or less detachment from the political life, running all the
way from cold belief to hot temper. We may find it becoming
more and more specific in its statement, till it embodies a policy or
a platform. We may find it at almost any stage from the "abstract
idea " up to the political party as a policy grouping.
Now a good many of these discussion groups represent vague
groupings of the population, but a good many of them on the
other hand represent sharply outlined and well-organized interests.
We may, for instance, have a huge "consumers' group" on one
side and a "trust" interest on the other side. There is no essential
difference between them for all of that. It is a little easier for
the vague groups to talk about themselves as "the people," and a
little more difficult for the well-organized groups to prove that
they are "unselfish;" but that is a detail of technique. An indus-
trial "interest" of the kind called capitalistic may put out books,
revel in theory and argument, work seductively or brazenly, spread
literature, organize clubs, and rally sympathizers, as well as any
other kind. Either kind of group may knit its theory and its
ideas up with the "established" belief groups of the time, and gain
strength by so doing. It can gain strength, that is, so far as those
established beliefs accurately represent underlying group interests,
or so far as they are survivals which no sufficient power, that is no
sufficient interest, has yet dislodged.
A particular form of this propaganda expression is to be found in
the press, which is an established agency in this semi-political
430 IIIK I'ROCKSS OF GOVERNMENT
activity in all of the large modern states, including even Russia.
The i)re.ss in its news columns actively distributes all kinds of
information through the society. Itself being part of the under-
lying interests, it provides a technique through which the others
form themselves in a way they would not so easily do without it;
that is evident enough. As one phase of its activity we find editorial
expressions, which are difTerentiated opinion-group activities.
It is useless to discuss "the power of the press" in general terms;
for that power, considering it both as manifested in editorials and
in the policy treatment of news columns, is in each particular case
just the equivalent of the representative value which the paper or
its particular editorial expression has, the size and character of
the paper's circulation being taken into account. Not that there
is any absolute value to each editorial; all fit together in systems;
but the test is steadily and effectively made against the group
interests which are being represented. The test does not lie in
any continuity of thought or independence of thought on the part
of the editor. Wliere a paper in general represents a very definite
and coherent element of the population, it can make its pretense
of being a pure reasoner with a good face ; but where it functions
on behalf of a mixed audience, it is mere trivial verbiage to put
it to the test of reason or beliefs alone. The press shows itself
in many forms, subsidized, riotous, partisan, independent, but in
whatever form it appears it needs interpretation in terms of the
groups it represents. Whether it sells itseK to one small clique
for cash, or to another by titillating its senses, or whether it is
identified with some particular interest without express prostitution
of either kind, is really an incident of a technical character; unless
indeed now and then a group interest is moved by some peculiarly
rank manifestation to take the field against one or the other form
of technique, making it subject for attack and seeking its sup-
pression or regulation.
An incidental development in connection with newspapers is
the systematized WTiting of letters "to the editor." In England
certain class interests have long gained regular expression in this
way without differentiated organization. In the United States
ELECTORATE AND SEMI-POLITICAL GROUPS 43^
the phenomenon has been less marked, but of late it has appeared
under the control of more or less strongly organized bureaus,
whether representing "special interests" or broader interests of
the kind that call themselves "the public."
From these various forms of discussion groupings we must
turn to the organizations which are concentrated more directly
on special lines of action, worked out in considerable detail. Here
we find in countries like the United States a limitless number of
reform organizations and special-interest organizations of unending
variety. They will range all the way from those which claim to
be purely motived by public spirit to those which do not even
attempt to disguise rank selfishness, but each and every one of
them is an interest organization of a representative character.
We may find a protectionist league, financed by certain industries
and representing not merely those industries but many related
interests. Now it will be agitating for new legislation, now defend-
ing achieved legislation, now working through the press, now ope-
rating on party organizations, and now on constituted legislative
bodies. Its technique may be as various as the situations it is
compelled to face. It may be a joke at one time and a power at
another. But always and all the time it gets its value and its
meaning in the process from the whole set of groupings with which
it must be brought into relation. A free-trade league may be
worked out similarly on its side with reference to the groupings
it represents and the character of the given oppositions in the
political field.
Or we may look at a civil-service-reform organization. Its
roster of members may be short and its financial strength limited,
but it represents an interest grouping among the population which
is injured by the particular "abuses" of the government which
have called the organization into being for the attack upon them.
Its fight is the fight of the strength behind it as that strength can
be brought to bear, and its success depends on the amount of power
it can develop as against the power opposed to it, allowing for
times and places of bringing its pressure to bear and proving the
reality of its contention by the practical test.
432 TIIK PROCKSS OF GOVERNMENT
Another illustration is the organization we now find in many
American cities — and on the point of being imitated at Washington
— for the supply of specific information about public officials,
especially about members of legislative bodies, to the voters.
These organizations have just the strength of the body of voters
behind tliem, and of the recognized need they fill, which is the
same thing. Certain peculiarities of our electoral system furnish
at once the opportunity and the cause for their existence. Their
future, which may range all the way from early disappearance
to development into recognized structures of government, will
depend exclusively on the subsidence or increase of this need,
and tlie only way to get a solid basis for judgment is by the analysis
of the group interests involved on all sides of the situation.
Again we find semi-political organizations planned to assist
or supplement the administrative work of the government, where,
owing to peculiarities of party rule or to other reasons, it is work-
ing poorly. Many "citizens' associations" in the United States
are in point. Perhaps in such cases every director or contributor
to such an association may think himself participating solely out
of a disinterested regard for public welfare, and perhaps we may
have no reason whatever to feel like entering a denial, yet neverthe-
less we can analyze the group need, the representative character
of the organization and its leadership, and usually we can find that
the men most prominent in the leadership belong to some group
tliat has a specially marked interest. An examination of the
incidental semi-political activities of real-estate boards in big
American cities would serve to bring out the point with great
clearness.
Still more striking is the organization which at times can be
found which produces what one may almost describe as substitute
legislatures. When there is some neglected interest to be repre-
sented, when the legislature as organized does not deal on its o\\ti
initiative with such matters, when a point of support in party
organization can be found— a point let us say of indifference, at
which nevertheless the ear of some powerful boss can be obtained —
a purely voluntary organization may be formed, may work out
ELECTORATE AND SEMI-POLITICAL GROUPS 433
legislation, and may hand it over completed to the legislature
for mere ratification.
These illustrations will suffice, albeit they are all taken from a
single country, and that a country in which the rights of free
association and free speech are guaranteed by law. The legal
guarantees, important as they are from a technical standpoint,
do not produce any vital difference in the human process. They
simply describe and help to maintain the group process as it is
actually proceeding. I have not found it necessary to emphasize
them for the simple reason that I have been giving a more adequate
description than they give to the very facts they indicate.
As for other countries it is only to be added that the particular
forms of voluntary semi-political organization as distinct from
party will depend on the group conditions and group organization
of the time and place. Where the government is operated through
groups, in the special political sense, as in France, instead of
through parties of the American type, some of these voluntary
organizations may appear as such group parties. Where the
government has become an atrocity, the semi-political organiza-
tions may arise in tremendous vigor with terrorism perhaps as
their weapon. Wlicre the bulk of the representative process
passes through a monarch instead of through an assembly, special
forms will appear. The varieties must be studied by the analysis
of the facts of the time and place.
CHAPTER XIX
THE GRADATION OF THE GROUPS
It is lime now to state in a somewhat more systematic form
the relationship between the various grades of groups, to which I
have attempted to reduce the social process in the preceding
chapters. And yet I must first make it emphatic that I am not
attempting so much to get results as to indicate methods, and
that I do not regard the extent of my study of the widely scattered
facts of government as great enough to warrant me in being dog-
matic about the exact number of varieties or even the typical
relationships of groupings. So far as a scheme of group relations
is put forth in this chapter it has no pretense to be more than
tentative.
Tracing the thread back to the deep-lying interest groups
which we find given in the population at each particular time and
place, I have tried to show how the various other groups which
attract attention most prominently on the surface of the govern-
mental process can be adequately interpreted only by locating
their exact representative quality with reference to the more
fundamental interest groups. This representation of group by
group has been traced along two general lines, that is, it has been
found in two general types ; one of these has been called discussion
groups ; the other may best be described by the term organization
groups.
If I have made no attempt to define these two types of groups
sharply, it is because, first of all, there is no sharp boundary line
between them; and, secondly, because my purpose in this work
is rather to show how both types of groups are functioning together
in one system, than to set up any special line of distinction by
definition. Such distinctions by definition will inevitably be made
from time to time for special purposes in connection with special
investigations; and they will not only be useful but absolutely
434
GRADATION OF THE GROUPS 435
essential tools ; useful, however, only so long as the special purposes
of the definitions are kept in view as they are used.
Tliere is, of course, organization in the simplest discussion,
and discussion in the farthest stages of organization. We might
picture the process as a flowing stream in which a perpendicular
cross-section would represent the discussion phase and a horizontal
cross-section the organization phase. Sometimes passing through
a narrow channel we have a very deep narrow stream, and the
perpendicular cross-section — the discussion — seems to be the
whole nature of the happening; again the stream spreads out on a
broad level surface, and the organization phase seems so complete
that the perpendicular aspect, the discussion, seems negligible.
But such a picture is exceedingly crude, however well it may
serve to bring out this one aspect of the relationship. We have
not a single flowing stream, but a mass of myriads of currents,
plastic rather than liquid, and leaving thousand-fold shapes and
forms both of discussion and organization differentiated along its
course.
There is one point of view as to the relation between the dis-
cussion and the organization phases which tempts the investigator
at almost every step, because of its appearance of simplicity and
ease; that is, to assign to discussion an intermediate position in
the process between "conditions" and "action." To do this
docs indeed mean some advance over an interpretation which
places the initiative in thinking, or in the scries of thought develop-
ment ; but it does not allow at all for the richness of the develop-
ment on the discussion side. We find there a bewildering wonder-
land of theory and dreaming, of exhortation and tirade, of fact and
fiction, every bit of it reflecting something of the living world of
men in which it arises, and nearly every bit of it presumptuously
asserting itself to be the center of the human universe, if not of a
more than human universe. We must find a way to follow the trains
of struggle and development through this mass, and to test what
part lies near the heart of the process reflecting there the strongest
pressures, and what part reflects but subsidiary currents or is
indeed but a flash and glitter far out upon the surface.
436 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
With the organization groupmgs vvc have somewhat the same
observations to make. They cannot be placed offhand as stages
of the process posterior to discussion. We may find organization
highly developed that has not gone through differentiated discus-
sion group process on any wide scale; we may find small groups
of this kind coming, so it seems, directly out of the lower-lying
groups without intermediate stages; and we may find organiza-
tion groups that have been cast up on shore by the continuing
process, so that they are little more than empty shells of past
forces. For all of these things allowance must be made.
So far as we find organization groups and discussion groups
identified with one another in great part, we must be able to get
the representativeness of each worked out in terms of the underlying
groups and the representativeness of each also in terms of the
other. With this achieved, we can obtain a balance which will
keep us from being led astray by the sweeping pretenses to domi-
nance of any one aspect of the process.
Let us begin with the discussion groups. Some will be abstract
theory, some will appear as emotional propaganda, some as
definite programmes of action. Each of them will reveal to us a
specialized discussion group with its leadership, the whole repre-
senting, or in other words leading, a group interest of the popula-
tion or a set of such interests. A convenient illustration is social-
ism. The catchword socialism stands for a very large number of
groupings which come to us in a confused throng when we first
begin to make the analysis. We find, far out at the extreme, a
theoretical discussion group, setting forth a theoretical socialism
in a highly generalized form. A little farther in toward the center
lie half a dozen or so theoretical socialisms much more special in
tlie form they assume and in the particular phase of social life they
reflect. Here Marxian socialism may serve as one example, with
Christian socialism as another, contrasted in character. Still
a little farther in, and we come to socialisms even more specific,
with the center of emphasis directed on different phases of the
process. Here we have marked nationality and industrial group
GRADATION OF THE GROUPS 437
characteristics plainly in view; also we find socialist political
parties in great variety. And finally we find many special lines of
activity, programmes, policies, and even laws and institutions,
which, whether with the catchword socialism in evidence or not,
we have to bring into relation with the other socialist phenomena.
This mere attempt to list socialist phenomena shows at once how
discussion and organization activities pass over into each other
by endless imperceptible gradations.
In our most outlying region of pure theory we might find a
certain "universal human" representation; that is, the socialism
as put forth would pretend to represent human group activity
detachable from limitations of time and place or at least with no
further limitations than the last 500 years of Europe, with America,
Australia, and a little of Asia aggregated to it. There we find a
small group of men reflecting or leading in a very vague way a
very wide group interest of presumably a very large proportion of
the human beings. Stating itself as idea pure and simple, the
discussion group is worked up in as vivid or convincing a form as any
abstracted idea business could be. But we should nowhere find
marked evidences of force, of pressure ; there would be no adjust-
ments under way in which we could see this group directly involved,
or for which this group stood in a clearly representative relation.
We should be compelled to regard it on the very proofs that we
gathered, as something tossed off to one side, as poorly representa-
tive of the groupings that are counting in the governing process,
as a bit of decoration rather than as an important part of the
moving process.
As we move inward toward the more specialized socialistic
theories, we get a chance to state them in terms of groups much
more limited' in character, but nearer to the groupings that are
manifestly counting in the process. We can read right out of
Marx's writings, for example, the specific group interests — the
interests of the proletariat under certain conditions, for example —
which they represent. We find the statement of these interests,
however, one which docs not sufficiently allow for the pressures
against them — I am, of course, not talking of the validity of
438 rilK TRCJCKSS Or GOVERNMENT
arguments, but of llif exact place which theory of this sort holds
as ^rouj) representative in the actually given historical process.
Broader though the leadership group may be, the represented
group is still vague, inefTective, impotent.
Move next to socialist parties, considered for the moment not
as j)articipating in government, but as programmes or propaganda,
and we finfl still greater specification, still more definite representa-
tion of interests. The pressures represented are easily discoverable
and to some extent capable of exact estimate. At the same time
the opposition pressures are in fact, whether in so many words
or not, allowed for in the group theory.
Taking these parties close in to action, that is, passing over for
the moment to the phase of organization rather than discussion,
we find the programmes still more specific, we find the opposition
pressures ver>' accurately estimated, and we are able to locate the
represented group interests almost entirely in powerful present-
day pressures. The verbiage here may be wilder than in the
most extremely "pure theory" first mentioned above, but the
process itself is well in harness, and the representation of actually
existing interests is vastly truer.
Finally, taking programmes and policies of the kind we com-
monly regard as related to these socialist programmes and policies
even when the express declaration of faith in socialism is absent,
wc find group interests of the same kind that the socialism in the
last form mentioned above had been representing, working along
the same lines, without the particular kind of discussion-group
representation which in other countries or other parts of the
countn,- was intermediate in their process.
\V1ien the most extremely "theoretical" groups claim to exercise
any dominating influence over the more practical discussion groups
or over any part of the social process, they can do it only on the
basis of a theory which is merely an uncouth importation from
crude individual psychology. There is absolutely nothing in
the facts of social activity as given us to justify their claims to be
the controlling elements in the situation. There is nothing to
justify the assertion that the complex social situation can best be
GRADATION OF THE GROUPS 439
Straightened out by working dowTi into it from their point of view.
On the other hand, when the most immediately practical policies
or programmes claim dominance we need not delay more than an
instant in order to recognize that they have their meaning and
value, such as it is, only within the closely restricted limits of the
particular situation in which they are working. It is always a
question needing measurement and proof, as to just what value,
what influence, any one of the phases of the discussion has for
or upon any of the other phases; and such values can only be
determined by reducing all phases to terms of the underlying
interests.
Turning our attention now to the organization groups, the
main types will at once be recalled, since in the discussion of the
various agencies of government we have had specimen groups of
this kind primarily in view all the way along. We find here two .
general varieties of representation, one in which the opposed |
groups reach adjustment through a single agent, the other in which
they have different agents who mediate the struggle by a smaller ■ i
struggle of their o^vn. But this distinction is cut across by another
distinction of even greater importance, namely, the extent in which
the groups are consolidated into set classes or are found in more
freely shifting forms. There is nothing inherently "good" in
either variety of representation and the success with which either
functions will depend on the given group and class conditions.
A despot with his army holding the balance between a number
of provinces plays the part of a mediator, often in a highly useful
way. So also may the president or other chief executive in govern-
ments like those of the United States. His strength at each moment
is the strength of the great, shifting complexes of groups that
support him. A representative assembly is typical of the second
variety of representation, especially as one finds it in countries
like France or Switzerland. But just as an individual as ruler
may become the instrument of class dominance, so may a repre-
sentative assembly. Sometimes we may have the assembly in two
branches, each a class instrument. Sometimes, indeed, we have the
440 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
asscmljly .-ippcaring in no other capacity than as class leader
against a ruler who is himself a class representative; and again
wc may have a single individual, whether despot or constitutional
ruler, given strength either as class leader or as mediator against
a class-ridden assembly. The various agencies of government
that have been discussed have shown these forms of representation
in all varieties of intermixture.
Into the matter of types of class formation I have not thought
it necessary to go for present purposes. Some wTiters give us a
series: caste, class, trade, party; others make it caste, order,
class. Hereditary membership is one of the tests that is used in
making such distinctions for special investigations, and the pos-
session of special legal privileges is another test. But even without
hereditary affiliation, and without formal advantages in law, there
may be a solidification of interest in fixed forms such as to justify
the use of the general term class, as opposed to the freer groupings
out of which class phenomena crystallize themselves. For my
purpose here I have been able to set all the difTerent kinds of class
phenomena off under the one name, and use group as the more
comprehensive term, embracing class, but specially applicable
to the less fixed and concentrated phenomena.
In connection with both the discussion and the organization
groups, one finds the personality groups, which are the outgrowths
of established leadership. A leader once placed wiU gather a
foUowing around him which will stick to him either on the discus-
sion level or on the organization level within certain limits set by
the adequacy of his representation of their interests in the past.
That is, as a labor-saving device, the line of action in question
will be tested by the indorsement of the trusted leader. The
leader may carry his following into defeat in this way, but that
very fact helps to define the limits of the sweep of groupings of
this type.
With organization groups, just as with discussion groups, the
most pretentious phases are not necessarily the ones to which the
most unportance must be attributed. They are not necessarily
the ones which best express the underlying interests. The gleam-
GRADATION OF THE GROUPS 441
ing tip of a governmental structure may or may not wield the full
weight of huge social pressures. It may be the agency for aug-
menting the strength of its subordinates, or it may do httle more
than label the strengths which those subordinates employ. There
is no rule of thumb.
Neither the discussion nor the organization groups can be
interpreted except in terms of lower-lying groups. Neither can be
found in government out of relation to the other, though the
importance of the one or of the other at various stages of the
process differs greatly. Always they shade into each other without
sharp boundaries. Is there, then, any remaining reason for hold-
ing them in fundamental opposition to one another, not as merely
different varieties of activity, but as social methods or elements
which arc qualitatively unlike ? I think not. The citizen of a
monarchy who sees his king ride by may feel himself in the
presence of a great power, outside of him, entirely independent of
him, above him. The man busy in one of the discussion activities
of the time may look upon ideas as masterly realities self -existing.
But neither ideas nor monarch have any power or reality apart from
their representation or reflection of the social life; and social life
is always the activity of men in masses.
Both discussion groups and organization groups are forms of
the organization of social life in a wider sense of the word organiza-
tion, and they show similar functional aspects. Both have leader-
ship. Both have their set, habitual phases. Both have a certain
residual group aspect which we may call their "o^vn interest."
Both show the phenomena of survivals. Both may be charged
with "tyranny," and in l^oth, when a movement for "liberty" is
under way, that movement is a movement of underlying interests
which are seeking better expression for themselves.
Idea activities — to use another term in place of discussion groups
for the moment — ^represent underlying interests, and so do govern-
ment activities. Both are differentiated structures through which
the interests work. Both are agencies for some of these underlying
interests as they strike at others. Neither ideas nor goveroments
442 rHK I'ROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
in their limiud imnK'diatc statement reflect fully the whole situation.
Tluy eannot Ix' understood for what they are till they have Vjeen
functioned in the social process; and to function them means to
reduce them to terms of the underlying interests which give them
their strength and their social meaning and value.
Not only are discussion groups and organization groups both
technique for the underlying interests, but within them we find
many forms of technique which shade into each other throughout
both kinds of groups. In the older fighting, soldiers might sing
as they went into battle, or an officer might go ahead waving the
colors. The singing and the officer illustrate the technical work of
the representative groups. They serve to crystallize interests,
and to form them solidly for the struggle, by providing rallying
points and arousing enthusiasm. For all that, it is the men as
organized behind the singing, the cheering, and the colors that do
the fighting and get the results.
]SIuscle is one form of technique for the groups, deception is
another, corruption is another; tools of war fortify muscles, and
tools for trickery also are to be found. Oratory and argument
count as technical agencies at their proper stages in governmental
development. Any such agency is employed where it answers to
needs until it becomes a nuisance and is suppressed. Corruption
as a technical agency is put down when it hurts groups of the
population powerful enough to put it down. Again, the use of
argument, of reasoning, whether in the form of clamor or of dogma-
tism, is technique which for itself is no more justified than is
violence or corruption. The bully thinks his fist an unanswerable
argument; and so the logician his logic. The logic may easily
btxome as great a pest and nuisance in a society as the bribes or
blows, in which case it will tend to the same fate. The man who
tends to give final reality to his generalizations, his individualism,
his anti-plutocracy, or what not, may roughen the process of
group adjustment just as may the bully or bribe-giver, till at
last his technique is made a content of group opposition and
suppressed. There is psychic process in all social technique, but
SN-stematized theories about society do not monopolize it or even
GRADATION OF THE GROUPS 443
offer the highest form of it. The theories do not give of necessity
a better clue to the social process than would bare blows.
As between discussion and organization phases the representa-
tive relation is no more complex or mystical than is, for example,
the representative relation between written letters and vocal sounds.
We have tvvo systems there, each of them having its value in terms
of the other; both of them activities which arc socially organized
and systematized, and which may in extreme cases reach adjust-
ment within the system through differentiated agencies of control
of their own. All of the groups, whether underlying interests,
or discussion groups, or organization groups, have values in terms
of each other, just as have the colors in a painting, or the sounds
in music. No color for itself alone, no sound for itself alone, but
each gets its meaning from all. There is not a bit of the process
that does not have its meaning in terms of the other parts.
We have next to ask how far we are justified in attributing
an independent influence, a pressure of their own over and beyond
the represented pressures, to the discussion groups or to the
organization groups looked on for the moment independently by
themselves. Of course my whole attitude on such a point as
this is that the question can only be answered in each case or in
each set of cases by careful and exact analysis of the given facts.
But there are nevertheless certain observations that may be made.
Let me first call attention to certain exaggerations, or at least
to certain shades of overemphasis, in various earlier chapters of
this book. In Part I, I was engaged in attacking the feelings and
ideas in their arrogation of independent existence and causal
power. In so far there was no exaggeration. But in practice
those feelings and ideas are far from being held off in any such
independence. They are made use of to indicate a very important
part of the social activity. And if my hne of criticism should be
applied literally to this activity, there would be an exaggeration in
its statement. The discussion activities, in other words, would
need more recognition than seemingly had been allowed them
there. Later, in my description of the pressures of the under-
444 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
lying interests as they act through the executive and legislature,
T ])ut tin- emi)hasis continually on these underlying pressures,
merely recogni/jng from time to time that a bureaucracy or an
army or a royal family was an interest group in itself, and similarly
that a legislature might have its own interest. That was done
because these bodies from the ordinary point of view get immensely
exaggerated emphasis as independent forces, and my object was
to break down that independent position attributed to them, and
to show them in their full representative aspect. On the other
hand, when wc came to the judiciary I went twice out of my way
to show that the judiciary might be looked on from one point of
view as having an interest of its own. The overemphasis in this
case, so far as it was an overemphasis, was again employed for
the very purpose of restoring the balance of emphasis. In the
parties, and in the electorate and semi-political groupings, we got
much closer to a balanced statement of the two aspects.
If we start out, now, to correct these exaggerations, we must
recognize first of all that all these discussion groups and organiza-
tion groups are themselves activities, themselves interests, and
that therefore they are themselves pressures in the moving society,
however trivial their pressures may sometimes be. At times I
have spoken of these activities, the discussion and organization
groups, as having their "own interest;" and at other times I
have spoken of the value that must be attributed to them as
" technique." The difference here is clearly one of point of view.
In the first case we identify the activity with the particular set
of persons in whom it is found in its differentiated form; in the
second case we refer it to the represented groups, but as a "plus,"
a heightening of their activity, an increased effectiveness.
The term "own interest" here may again be understood in
two ways. Either it may indicate a specialized underlying interest
of the individuals who compose the group in question — so, for
instance, the " selfish " personal interests of a despot or of a boss and
his henchmen — or it may mean the tendency of the representative
group to persist, i. e., its inertia, whether the case is of a beHef or a
gpvemmental form. As an underl}dng interest, the "own inter-
GRADATION OF THE GROUPS 445
est" must take its place with all the other underlying interests at
its due strength, and it does not concern us here. As a tendency
to persist we must remember that it is continuously sustained by
the complex of underlying groups. But this last statement is
vital also with reference to the "plus as technique." The under-
lying groups themselves create this technique, and the farther we
push the analysis, the nearer we come to stating the technique,
not as a technical instrument, a tool apart from the hand, but as
the functioning phase of tool-in-hand at work.
The problem we have here is not the same as that which arises
out of a contrast between the individual and the institution, which
is so often discussed. For us both the individual and the institution
have been absorbed into social groups, that is, restated as social
groups. We have to deal with, not some mysterious "power"
of organization, but the actual process through representative
organization groups and representative discussion groups.
I am inclined to think that if a complete enough analysis of
the whole process could be made we could attain a point of view at
which we could see the activity of all these discussion and organiza-
tion groups so completely absorbed into the represented interests,
that we should no longer feel ourselves under the necessity of
attributing any independent activity to them. But I am also
inclined to think that the point of view from which this could
practically be done is very far indeed beyond the possibilities of
our attainment. So that it all comes back to what I have repeatedly
said before, that we must push our analysis to the limit of our means,
and then allow only what remainder of pressure there is to the
"own interest" of the organization or discussion group, or to its
"plus as technique."
In different societies, societies with different types of under-
lying interest-group formations, we shall find the relative impor-
tance to be attributed to discussion and organization groups varying
greatly; but in no society can wc find these more superficial groups
determining the fate of the underlying groups. In the societies
I know most about it is my opinion — always subject to revision
on fuller knowledge — that we already are able to push the analysis
446 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
far enough to justify us in saying that the lower-lying groups are
alTccted by the discussion groups only in very short swings and in
limited ways; and that they are affected by organization groups
in slightly longer swings and more pronouncedly; but that both
discussion and organization groups yield to the lower-lying groups
with surprising rapidity when the actual change in the balance of
pressures takes place. And this explains why it is that no recon-
struction of society in terms of the life-history of ideas, or of the
life-history of governmental forms, can have more than a crude
prchminary descriptive value.
CHAPTER XX
REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT, DEMOCRACY, AND CON-
TROL BY "THE PEOPLE"
There is a theory — I do not know how far back it can be traced
— that all acts of government ought to be the product of clear,
cold reasoning, and that the maximum of detachment on the part
of the legislator from the interests at stake will get the best results.
We may say that this is "the" theory of political science, as it
certainly is the professed point of view of most criticisms of govern-
ment and of the theoretical statement of most schemes of reform
which do not get into too close contact with immediate apphca-
tion. According to it every point at which government gets away
from the purest and freest reasoning is an abnormal point. Accord-
ing to it also the standards of justice and desirability are matters
which reason alone, if left undisturbed, can solve.
I will not say anything more about the psychology of this theory,
for unless my previous chapters have completely miscarried it
should be clear enough by this time that in government we have ,
todowith powerful p^roup pressures which may perhaps at times
adjust themselves through differentiated reasoning processes, but
\giich adjust themselves likewise through man}- other processes,
and which, through whatever processes they arc working, form the
very flesh and blood of all that is happening. It is these group V
pressures, indeed, that not only make but also maintain in value
the very standards of justice, truth, or what not that reason may
claim to use as its guides.
I do, however, wish to use this theory as we meet it in con-
nection with American government to introduce what I have to
say in greater detail than heretofore about representative govern-
ment, democracy, and the whole topic of the control of govern-
ment by "the people." Concretely, one may recall first of all the
plan of the American Constitution for the election of the president,
447
448 TIIK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
how trusted men were to be chosen in the states, how these were
to pet together in small meetings by states, where they would not
be subject to stampeding, and were to cast their votes for the best
man of the country for president; also how this thing never hap-
j)cni(l. but instead how the underlying interests of the country
represented in the parties seized upon these little electoral gather-
ings and whirled them out of the way like feathers, playing through
them according to their will.
Our early constitutional conventions were supposed to be
constituted of "able men who listened to thoughtful arguments
and were themselves influenced by the authority of their leaders."
There it was supposed that "the councils of the wise prevailed
over the prepossessions of the multitude." I am quoting from
the American Commonwealth. Our modern legislatures are
often disparaged in contrast with the good old times, and their
lack of wise reasoning is made the mark of their degeneracy.
Now, we know where it is that the formal reasoning process
may come to the front as the form through w^hich government
works — as technique, that is. It is where the reasoners are united
in a group which is functioning in such marked opposition to
some other group or groups that ihe various reflections of the
process through the various heads become but as trifling oppositions
in comparison with the greater opposition of the group to other
groups: the marked opposition here referring not to verbal state-
ments nor to the advanced stage of the pending adjustment, but
to the underlying elements of the conflict.
We know also that, with the adjustment of one such opposition,
new oppositions will form within the bosom of the, let us say,
\'ictorious group, and that the conditions for the whole group, as
spht up on new lines, will cease to be favorable to the formal
reasoning process. We find, indeed, the same interest groupings,
which previously in their subdued form might have adjusted them-
selves through the reasoning process, now forcing themselves
more vehemently forward, and refusing to be content with com-
promise of that kind, insisting on showing their full strength by
all the technical means which the prevailing habits of the time
CONTROL BY "THE PEOPLE" 449
permit to them. In the United States we obsen^e every day the
forces adjusting themselves in our legislative bodies and in other
officials in a way in which argument pure and simple in its own
right holds a very subordinate position, confined indeed in the
main to the minor groupal adjustments inside the main con-
tending groups.
Evidently then on the very face of the facts this pure-reasoning
test is not a good test for representative government or democracy;
nor docs its presence or absence throw any great light on the extent
of popular control of government, either in the good or in the bad
sense. Certainly when the presidential electoral system of the Con-
stitution was overthrown in this country there was not a decrease
but an increase in representative government and in democracy,
whichever one of these vague terms one uses for the moment.
Not until the party and convention system had taken the presi-
dency under the present fairly complete control did the presidency
become "the people's office." At present, while our legislatures
are in the main working poorly, so that any kind of an interest with
peculiar technique giving it undue proportional strength can get
results from the legislatures, these bodies are catholic in their
yielding to such pressures, caring not where they come from, so
long as they are strong enough, or in other words, not resisting in
one direction more than in another, provided the pressure is applied.
They are representative bodies in their way, even though "the
people" do not get their desired results with sufficient frequency.
I am not going to discuss definitions of representative govern-
ment nor of democracy, inasmuch as most of those definitions
belong on a discussion level very remote from the actually moving
governmental process. They reflect something of the process in
that " theoretical " way discussed in the preceding chapter, but they
stand too far out from the heart of things to count for much in
such work as this. There is one contrast, that between the repre-
sentative and the delegate, however, to which further consideration
should l)e given. These two words are not used in the same way
by all writers, representative with some standing for what others
45°
IK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
mean by dclrj^alc, but that ntcd not confuse us here. I myself
in previous cha[)t(.TS have used the word "represent" in a most
general sense, assimilating it to "reflect," and allowing it to cover
cases in which all groups functioned through a common organ,
as well as those in which a complex agency contained different
individual members for different groups; including therefore cases
of personal discretion as well as of differentiated representation.
That was because it was most important for me to emphasize
the similarities, not the differences. In what is immediately to
follow I shall use representative in a much more conventional
sense.
Now in this more conventional sense a monarch is not a repre-
sentative. He is a ruler. The president is not a representative,
except where we find him acting as part of the law-making body
against Senate or House or Senate and House. Then he may be
a representative of a certain group or set of groups which somehow
have been left for the time being and on the given show of facts
unrepresented in either or both houses. To catch our representa-
jtive we have got to look where one group of people, formal or
i fundamental, has one member in some common body, and other
' groups have other members. And here we may find that what we
really have is not a representative, but a delegate.
The representative is supposed to be a man who is intrusted
\^^th discretion to act for those who have chosen him, in such
manner as he sees fit. A delegate is supposed to be a man who
has received definite instructions from his electors and who is
authorized to act only in accordance therewith. It is comparatively
easy to find an illustration of the delegate, as in the members of
the Bundesrat of the German Empire, but your representative,
such as he is supposed to be, is hard indeed to find ; though within
his Umitations the diplomat of pretelegraph days will serv^e. In
the first place, the representative is commissioned not for any
purpose whatever, but to act within the Hmits of a definite system.
He is limital by his very function. In the next place, he has
probably been chosen by his electorate or by the appointing power
in competition with some other candidate, and in the competition
CONTROL BY "THE PEOPLE" 451
his attitude on certain matters has been brought out before the
electorate or the appointing power and to some extent passed upon
by it there : whereby he is hmited again. If he is a party member,
he is more expressly limited by that allegiance. Also, by being
in contact with his constituents from time to time, his action will
probably be affected so that it will be reduced to one of a small
number of possibihties. Finally we may find him swayed entirely
by his constituents on some one or more issues and reducing himself
to their delegate. If it were a question of formal law, the repre-
sentative and the delegate could easily be distinguished. But we
have to do with the practical process and so we must face the
problem in all its fluidity.
Now, on the basis of the theory to which I gave attention at
the opening of this chapter, one hears much criticism of the horrors
which result from the reduction of wise, intelligent, and able
representatives to mere delegates. A writer like Ostrogorski will
grieve his heart out over it, and even one like Bryce will frequently
deplore such a development. But I do not know any basis on
which this tendency per se can be deplored save that of the particu-
lar theory which sets up the representative function in its extreme
abstract form as the ideal and standard of government. And
since the gradations between the representative and the delegate
function are so many and so fine, and since, further, one nowhere
finds a representative acting fully up to the idea of the word, I do
not see how any such general line of criticism or judgment can be
held valid. Of course, such expressions "represent" something
themselves. They are used to indicate or label some group evil
from the critic's point of view. The trouble with them is that
they do not indicate the large situation with sufficient accuracy;
that they are rather embroideries on the talk level than sub-
stantial reflections of the process. When even so fine a character
and so admirable a statesman as Senator Hoar says, as he says
in his autobiography, " I have always voted and spoken as I ought,"
he is not really characterizing his activity, but inerely giving it a
conventional and inadequate statement.
When it is said of political parties that they are no longer
452 rHK PROCESS OF OOVERNMENT
instruments of public \)()\ky, l)ut instead are this, that, or the
otluT non-reusoninf^ ck'ment in the government, the same limita-
tion in the view-point is to be noted. Morley in his essay "On
Compromise" spoke of the increasing prevalence of "the slovenly
willingness to hold two contradictory propositions at one and the
same time," and I imagine there never has been or will be a time
when critics with the superciliously intellectual point of view of
Morley will not Unci the same defect in the world to bewail. To
speak in terms of progress for the moment, it would surely be an
advance if parties should drop their set, formal, logically coherent
policies, providing that thereby they gave more efficient expression
to the underlying interests they represent. Along with these
illustrations might be mentioned the recent writer on the American
Constitution, who pointed proudly to "the idea of representative
government growing by its own power," thereby giving exception-
ally naive expression to a common point of view. But his super-
ficiality speaks for itself.
It is necessary then in considering representative government,
or democracy, not only past or present, but future as well, to con-
sider it in terms of the various group pressures that form its
substance. It is useless to pause with some formal definitions,
add on a few theoretical standards, and then try to get the facts
straightened out. Instead, at every stage these forms must be
considered as they are used by the pressures. As substance,
rather than process, they can be taken into account only so far
as we gain positive knowledge that they are, in the given state of
the group oppositions, used by certain groups in such a w^ay that
other groups, reacting against the evil in the situation, are poten-
tially or manifestly tending toward attack upon them.
It docs not seem to me necessar}' here to go back over the
analysis of the process as set forth in the chapters on the various
agencies of government. Merely to recall them is to point out
how the group pressures in the population form themselves on
the various discussion levels and organization levels, tending always
to express themselves in both ways or in any way, and actually
expressing themselves to such degrees as the resistance of the
CONTROL BY "THE PEOPLE" 453
Other groups as represented in the government will permit at the
given time. But a special reminder is desirable of the district
system of representation, which in modern countries as a rule
is highly formal when compared with the substance of the interests
which are striving to exert themselves through it.
In governments like that of the United States we see these
manifold interests gaining representation through many thousands
of officials in varying degrees of success, beating some officials
down now into delegate activity, intrusting representative activity
(in the narrow sense) to other officials at times in high degree,
subsiding now and again over great areas while "special interests"
make special use of officials, rising in other spots to dominate, using
one agency of the government against another, now with stealth,
now with open force, and in general moving along the route of
time with that organized turmoil which is life where the adjust-
ments are much disturbed. Withal, it is a process which must
surprise one more for the triffing proportion of physical violence
involved considering the ardent nature of the struggles, than for
any other characteristic.
We often hear of "the control of government by the people."
The whole process is control. Government is control. Or, in
other words, it is the organization of forces, of pressures. In a
limited way I might add it is the organization of public opinion,
and this indeed is a phrasing which once upon a time I would
have put ffi^st in the series. But the whole process of control
is too deep and vital to be stated as the organization of opinion:
the opinion is but one differentiated agency to represent the process,
and not at all the most accurate expression of it, at that.
What is usually meant by "control by the people" is only one
of the elements in control. It is a generalized statement, poorly
representative, indicating certain direct reactions by large masses
of men against certain smaller masses which, as appears in the w
group oppositions themselves, are controlling the government//
process to an excessive degree. These oppositions appear, how-
ever, on what — to use the terminology of economic theory — may be
I
454 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
called the margin of the governmental process. And the reason
why the "control by the jx-ople" is a poorly representative state-
ment is just because the great underlying masses of control are
in existence, much deeper and more fundamental as facts than
the contest that is being waged on the margin.
The greater portion of the detail of governmental work, as
emboflied especially in the law that is being daily sustained, is
composed of habitual reactions which are adjustments forced by
large, united weak interests upon less numerous, but relatively
to the number of adherents, more intense interests. If there is
an>'thing that could probably be meant by the phrase "control by
the people " just as it stands, it is this. And we may even say that
without "control by the people" there would be no government,
save in the cases of subjected peoples under foreign masters, with
assimilation little advanced. And even here, unless the one weapon
of government is the ever-drawn sword, such control is the mani-
fested phenomenon.
There is, be it remembered, the wider field of control, that
is of adjustment of group to group, outside the field of government
in the narrow sense of the term, and forming the background in
which the processes of government are carried on. Often a
group interest, developing under some special conditions to an
extreme, will give way through this outer control before the opera-
tions of government proper are appealed to. Part of this field is a
sediment from the process of government itself, involving adjust-
ments so deep set that they are dropped from the ordinary w^ork of
the organized government. All of this extra-governmental adjust-
ment, while forming the background for the government process
and capable of interpretation by xery similar methods, is outside
of our immediate field of study.
Now when government, as the representative of the "absent"
or quiescent group interests, is distorted from this function to any
noticeable extent by the concentrated pressures of smaller group
interests, themselves the result of newly opened opportunities
in the social mass, and fails to respond as it should, we hear the
cry that there is need of "control by the people," and we see the
CONTROL BY "THE PEOPLE" 455
formation of a group interest directly aroused in opposition to
the interests which have gained objectionable power. And when
the agencies through which the "people," or in other words such
large group interests, habitually react fail to work smoothly for
them — as is the case with the highly organized parties at times —
we find the cry for popular control directed against those very
agencies. The mysticism of "the people" is a matter of speech
alone. The real facts are to be found by us in the groups as we
analyze them out, and there only.
That "pure democracy" often heard of in arguments under
similar circumstances and in theories which run to the far extreme
from the moving process, may be mentioned in the same con-
nection. It is supposed to be a "government by the people"
directly and irmnediately, but the slightest analysis of the process
at any point shows How very poorly representative the phrase is,
save as a slogan and rallying cry for some particular groups at
special stages of their activity. Freedom, liberty, independence,
and other similar rallying cries in the governmental process all
need the same kind of interpretation.
If now we take a different point of view and examine the set
structure of control in the organized government, including the
checks and balances of which American political theory has so
much to say, we shall find a great variety of established methods.
We have here to do with structures which were set up, and which
remain, to prevent special groups, whether "the people" or the
"special interests" of current speech, from getting a disproportionate
power of functioning through the government. First of all we
have, of course^ the control of executive by legislature and vice versa,
and the control of both by the judiciary. Then we have the contml
"wRich is arranged by separating local from general issues^ a,-control
which in the United States is exerted in three divisions, the federal,
the state, and the local governments. Then comes the conjjpl
involved in the establishment of many independent offices in any
TShe field, each of the offices subject directly to the suffrage. Tlie
majority vote on a wide suffrage basis may also be added for
controlling all the agencies mentioned. Again we find parties,
456 'PHK TROCESS OF GOVPIRNMENT
first as direct group representatives, and then as syndicated agencies
for group representation, controlling from their own level, now
one, now another, sometimes all, of the more specialized agencies
of government, and at times producing a unification, as well as
at times a more pronounced splitting, between them. There is
also the control of party by party faction, and, of course, of one
party by a rival party or by rival parties, that being essential in
any party operation. Finally we have the control exerted by groups
expressing themselves through public-opinion activities as these
are practically analyzed by the controlled agents in the very act
of their expression. And all of this controlling process takes at
times the appearance of a control of persons and at times of the
control of policies, according to the variations of the content that
is being functioned through the process.
This structural arrangement of government is that which
constitutes representative government, or democracy, whichever term
is used. Definitions, or rather descriptions, which state govern-
ments in terms of the functioning of the groups through these
bits of structure, to whatever extent or in whatever proportions
they are present, are something that one can depend on far more
than on definitions in terms of artificial men, acting in artificial
ways under artificial conditions, and depending entirely on credu-
lity for their claim to mirror rightly the tendencies of the process
as it develops in time.
Besides these elements of such government we may also take
into account various other methods of control which are now
forming themselves as structure to some extent in a great many
countries. More of them at once are perhaps to be found
in the United States than anyAvhere else, securing their places
on the basis of the actual group force they have behind them; but
that is only as it happens. It is no mere accident, but a very
normal fact, that the very project of a referendum on ordinary
legislation, which is the monopoly of the "friend of the plain
people" in the United States is put forth coincidentally by the
House of Lords in England for its own ofiicial purposes.
We may enumerate here besides the referendum -in its various
CONTROL BY "THE PEOPLE" 457
forms, the initiative, the recall, the direct primaries, and perhaps
also proportional representation and other plans to readjust the
organization of the suffrage, where its majorities and minorities
seem to work too crudely. This latter bit of structure, proportional
representation, at least in the United States, has never had much
actual pressure behind it; where it has been introduced it has come
as a bit of the poorly representative work of the "wise men" in
government; and the group pressures that accompany its use
seem to be such that they inevitably break it down instead of
sustaining it. At any rate in Illinois one allied scheme has recently
been abandoned, and another seems to be on the point of going, even
though a very difficult process of constitutional amendment will be
necessary to that end. This, however, is only incidentally remarked.
I am perfectly well aware that these various forms of control,
as we find tliem developing, have arguments made for them con-
tinually in the name of democracy, and against them continually
in the name of representative government, with many criss-cross
arguments on both sides. But if there is anyway by which theoretic-
ally or otherwise they can be shown to be more typical of either
democracy or representative government, or more filled with the
"spirit " of either of these types of government, than are our present
systems, I know not how it is. That is, I know the logic of the
arguments, and I know its inutility, but I do not know how the
point can be made in terms of the group interests which make up
the people.
Group interests there certainly are behind many of these tend-
encies, and strong ones at that, but they are very concrete, imme-
diate group interests, growing directly out of oppositions which have
developed in the developing process. They can be located, most
of them, with great exactness as to their strength and meaning in
the whole given political system. But they can be located as
well on one theory as on another. And the representation that
they commonly get on the discussion level, whether from friends or
enemies, is very poor indeed, save as so much noise, so much enthu-
siasm, so much quickening of the flow of blood in the members
of the banded group.
458 Till': rkocESS of government
Tlifsr various tendencies have their usual statement as reform
movements, but it hardly seems necessary to say anything more
of them in that aspect. There they appear as busy discussion
groupings and as voluntary organization groups, but I have
already discussed this process, and I only note here how easy it
is, and how essential also, to strike down through these specialized
and more superficial phenomena to the underlying forces.
Out of all this mass of phenomena of representative govern-
ment and democracy it is of course possible to draw off pictures
mirroring, mainly with aesthetic value, the status of a whole nation
as contrasted with the status in other nations, but I am inclined to
think, there are much better ways to do it than in terms of the
democracy and representative- government theories: and to do it,
while at the same time retaining the full value of "the people" in
the process.
One might estimate the amount of blocking in the functioning
of the government, the kinds of technique necessary, or at least
tolerated for the operation of several varieties of interests, and
the extent to which interests are compelled to overstate themselves
on the discussion level while struggling to make themselves effective.
One might work out a picture of the adjustments, "normal" for
the given society, not in terms of a providence that filled every
mouth, nor of a morality projected to ideality from any given
point of view, but in terms of the adjustment of actual strengths
in the given society, in terms of such a process that every interest
forcing itself beyond the point of endurableness to the remainder
of the interests would be checked before its excess had provoked
violent reaction.
We should certainly not find, if we attempted such a picture,
that our own modern societies were the best adjusted, the most
advanced or progressive reported to us in history. And we cer-
tainly should find, that the relatively perfect adjustment of any
society was a function not of some absolutely and independendy
stated characteristic of political structure, but instead, of under-
lying group conditions, of situations and disturbances of situations,
CONTROL BY "THE PEOPLE" 459
due to factors far down beneath the political level, however reacted
upon in special phases from the pohtical level.
Such picturing of society lies very far outside of my sphere,
farther even than the examination of the underlying conditions
for this whole process; but to the latter I will devote a few para-
graphs in the next chapter, more to show the field which I remain
outside of, than in any way to attempt to occupy it.
CHAPTER XXI
THE UNDERLYING CONDITIONS
I have talked repeatedly about the "underlying groups"
without attempting to specify them systematically. I conceive
that these groups must be taken as they come, in each country
and period as they are there and then found. I do not think they
have as yet been worked out in sufficient detail for many countries
to justify any attempt at a general classification of the types of
underlying groups which enter into political life. I wish here
only to show in a general way some of the conditions of the forma-
tion of these underlying groups, more by way of indicating how
such matters He outside the scope of this volume, than to make
any positive contribution to their understanding.
The biologically described man is, of course, part of our given
fact ; but he docs not as such, that is without further interpretation,
enter directly into our social studies. Where the whole interpreta-
tion can be made directly in terms of vital factors, we are still
within the field of biology and do not get to anything that we can
call sociology, or a phase of sociology, at all. There is unques-
tionably a physical selection going on among men in society, as
for example under the influence of war and of disease ; and there
are important facts of physical adaptation, as in resistance to
disease, which are shown not only in the disappearance of certain
plagues, but also in adaptation on the one side to the perils of
tro])ical jungle and on the other side to the no less serious perils
to the health from crowded city Ufe. But these things must all
be stated as aspects of group activity before they become signifi-
cant for the interpretation of government, or, for that matter, for
any other interpretation of social process. While there is systema-
tized behavior in the animal before there is society in the sense of
that word which impHes structural arrangement in a mass of men,
nevertheless with the very simplest differentiation of such activities
460
UNDERLYING CONDITIONS 461
in the mass, which itself is social structure, we get beyond the
activity in its merely biological description; in other words, we
get beyond instincts and similar factors as adequate causes of
social process. Here also we must interpret in terms of the
groups differentiated in the human material.
I cannot resist the temptation to point out that so far from this
method of interpretation being in opposition to "natural selection,"
it is itself a form of truly natural selection studied under circum-
stances which give peculiarly good opportunities for getting
intimate understanding of the process instead of merely sweeping
views of results ; and that, so far from the group method of inter-
preting society being liable to criticism from the point of view of
natural selection in the restricted sense of the phrase, it is much
more apt to help the students of that phase of natural selection
to a better comprehension of it. There is a representative process
involved in the pressures in animal and vegetable life, different
enough in technique from that of the social world, which neverthe-
less cannot safely be overlooked.
Taking the human being from the biological point of view, we
may admit a substratum of physical race for the groups, so far as
such race facts can be proved to exist; whether with reference to
differences as between different societies, or as to differences
between different elements in one society. But they all appear in
social interpretation as group facts. I have already indicated how
the group factors usually attributed to race are in reality complexes
of group activities, and I do not need to say anything more about
them here except to point out that they rest on all the different
underlying conditions mentioned in this chapter.
Passing now from the biological man to the physical environment,
again we find that this docs not enter as such into the interpretation
of social happenings. I have here only to apply what I said about
the environment in chap. vii. In the group we take up the environ-
ment as well as the men, the group itself being formed in a wav
that includes both. Perhaps I should best be understood if I
said the physical environment is not taken into our study concretely
462 THE I'ROCKSS OF GOVERNMENT
—as so many sticks, stones, rivers, cows, and other things. But I
prefer to phrase it with greater accuracy the other way about,
and insist that, while wc do take it into account concretely, i. e.,
in the groups, wc do not take it abstractly, i. c, as lying apart
from men; for I conceive that as we observe it lying apart it is an
abstraction from the living, moving groups.
Now, abstracting the physical environment, that is, looking
at the groups from the point of view of the environment (which
is permissible merely as a stage in the analysis), we may first
^. examine the environment as a condition of the group formation.
In other words, when we take up a given society for study we may,
to begin with, strive to state the groups in terms of the different
factors of the physical environment, as far as we can analyze them
out. Most crudely put, we have groups resting on mines, farms,
fisheries, cattle herds, city lots; we have groups related to steam
power and to electricity. We have many forms of all of these.
Deserts and rivers and space itself count with them also. But with
all these we do not get so very far. Groups stated with reference
to these factors which in one society appear in sharp opposition
to each other may in another appear as in close co-operation.
The most important of these groups assume wealth forms. We
'\ are but developing our analysis of the groups when we get them
stated as wealth groups. The capital oppositions come in all
their various historic forms, down to the present-day oppositions
which on the discussion level monopolize the word capital as
the symbol of numerous things, actual and imagined. We are
of course here considering the groups primarily with a \dew to
their importance in the study of government; and all these various
wealth groups are of special importance, because of their liability
to fierce activity when thrown out of adjustment at any time, and
further because of the direct and indirect technical advantages
the wealthier groups secure; direct advantages being typified best
by corruption, and indirect perhaps by education.
But with these we have by no means come to an end. The
mass of the population, sheer number, taken of course in connec-
tion with place and wealth conditions, has an enormous amount to do
UNDERLYING CONDITIONS 463
both with the lines of group opposition that form themselves and
with the violence of the group struggles and the whole technique
of group interaction. Changes in the mass are of the greatest
importance, and the difference between city and country also
attract attention here.
Again there is the technique of industry, all the ways of doing
things from the simplest tool-making of the savage up to the last
methods of applied science. These things, themselves the products
of group oppositions, become so important in the structure of
the society that we are justified in setting them off abstractly as we
have the preceding factors, and looking upon the group oppositions
from their point of view. They too must be reckoned with in the
analysis.
Also as a special branch of these latter factors there are the
meaiis_^_cpminunicatiwij both the transportation lines and the
organized dissemination of information through the press and other
agencies. The story of the trade routes has in recent years been
told, the significance of the Roman highways has been pointed out,
and that also of the great rivers of history; and in our own times
we know, every one of us, right from the face of the facts, how
differently we should be grouped, and hence pohtically organized,
in the United States, without our highly developed methods of
communication. We can see how some of the peculiarities in the
operation of our wide-extended suffrage depend upon such factors,
but we can see at the same time how these factors themselves are
the outgrowth of underlying group interests and can only be given
independent attention by abstraction from those interests.
Another consideration is the manner of organization of the
underlying factors, considered as apart from their direct organiza-
tion with reference to government. An industrial corporation
is, of course, in one way the "creature" of law, but more funda-
mentally the tendencies to joint operation in industry are the creators
of the corporation law itself. Organization as we see it in corpora-
tions and in labor unions, the structure, that is, of pressures that
have gained a technical method for making themselves industrially
more effective — must be taken into account as we find it. The
464 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
fjucstion as to how far some groui^s have had historically their
own organization as separate societies before they have entered
into closer relations to one another in one common society is not
of fun(himental ini])ortance, but only one special line of variation
in the general group process.
I do not mean that these are all the factors, that is to say, points
of view, which must be taken into account in the analysis of the
underlying groups. I give them as the great factors which stand
out most clearly at this moment. They can be conceived of, and
to a considerable extent actually handled, as existing apart from
government. So far as this can be done they help us to the state-
ment of the groups which can properly be described as underlying
government.
But at the same time it must never be forgotten that the groups
as they take their place in government tend to fix themselves in
their governmental forms, and that in this way government itself,
as a complex of pressures, may at times need to be regarded as
one of the factors in determining the groups which, when we are
studying government, we must inevitably at certain stages analyze
out separately as underlying government.
CHAPTER XXII
THE DEVELOPMENT OF GROUP INTERPRETATION
For two reasons I wish now to sketch the development which
the interpretation of society in terms of groups has undergone in
the last generation. One is that the manner of writing in this
book has not permitted sufficient reference to the previous use of
the method by different investigators. The other is that this
very method of interpretation is itself a group phenomenon, since >
each separate book that has used it is itself a phase of the leader-
ship of a discussion group, and each such discussion group is
itself representative with greater or less accuracy of wider group
interests. In discussing the various theories, I shall be able to
indicate in some slight measure the character of the representation
which these theories give us of group interests and their places
in the moving system. It is a question here, once more, not of
complete description, but merely of illustration, and I make no
pretense of naming all the writers who deserve to be named in this
connection, nor of working out thoroughly their connection with
the political process in which they are involved or which they
reflect.
The starting-point for practical purposes is, of course, Karl
Marx. Not that the implied use of groups in reasoning about
society begins with him — it is indeed the body of all the reasoning.
I shall speak of that in the next chapter. Nor can it be said that
similar views were not explicitly held before him. I assert merely
that the setting of activity in which he was the center threw the
theory out into unusual distinctness.
With Marx it was the "class struggle," a very crude form of
group interpretation, but one highly significant in its immediate use.
The cause which Marx led was of course a group cause. His group
was receiving through its leaders an unusually vehement verbal
expression just at that time. So vehement was this expression
46s
466 Tin; I'RocKss of- govkrnmknt
that all other gr^uj) opi)Ositions except the one of the proletariat
and the masters seemed to sink from view, to be trivial, and so
neglij^'il)le. The ^oup was erected in talk into a class; the class'
aj)iHari(l theoretically solid and firm, and the whole problem of
Icadershi]) was to get its members all into action at once. Its
victory, descrilx-d in millennial terms, was to come forthwith.
Now Marx and his friend Engels were fresh from dalliance with
Hegel and other similar pleasures of youth, and they promptly
reflected this situation in generalized terms along certain very
interesting theoretical lines. The big group they were helping to
lead, the class of the proletariat, they erected into a type, and
history, they said, was the struggle of the classes. The directly
economic character of the class they led inspired them at once to a
statement of the process as historical materialism or, in more
recent phrase, as the economic interpretation of history. We get
from them such sentences as :
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.'
In the social production which men carry on they enter into definite rela-
tions that are indispensable and independent of their will: these relations of
production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material
powers of production. The sum total of these relations constitutes the eco-
nomic structure of society — the real foundation on which rise legal and political
superstructures and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness*
The mode of production in material life determines the general character of
the social, jxjlitical, and spiritual processes of life. It is not the consciousness
of men that determines their existence, but on the contrary their social exist-
ence determines their consciousness.^
The whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal
society holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles,
contests between exploiting and exploited, ruHng and oppressed classes.^
Marx's political economy was a special method of reflecting this
' Communist Manifesto, authorized Eng. trans., p. 7.
' Marx, Preface to Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, translated as A
Contribution to the Critique, etc., p. 11.
3 Engels, Introduction to English edition of Communist Manifesto, p. 5.
See also preceding sentences, and Engels, The Development of Socialism from
Utopia to Science, New York, 1892, p. 13.
DEVELOPMENT OF GROUP INTERPRETATION 467
group process at the particular stage he was observing, on the
discussion level, but we arc not interested in it here. Our question
is how far did his theory of the class struggle and his historical
materialism correctly express the situation. The proof that they
reflected it but very feebly lies in the known facts of the years that
followed. The proletariat, he thought, was such a sharply defined
class that it was only necessary "to point out and bring to the
front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independent
of all nationality.'" Working-men of all countries were to unite.
But in fact, the International, which was to lead them, was a com-
plete failure. A proletariat class, such as Marx and Engels conceived
it, simply did not exist. Labriola, it is true, apologizes for the
International's failure on the ground that its task was "the pre-
liminary equalization of the ideas common and indispensable to
all the proletariat,"^ and says it necessarily disappeared when its
work was done, but he does not reflect here Marx's idea of what the
International was to do, nor does he do justice to his own very
intelligent expression of historical materialism, in allowing such
a function to ideas in this connection.
An incidental proof of the weakness of Marx's theory as he
himself held it was that he was unable with all his mental agility
to work out a dear statement of what he meant by a class. Even
as good a socialist as Kautsky complains of this.^ Further, we
have the fact that Marx had so little appreciation of the fundamental
workings of the group process that he expected classes to disappear
in the coming reign of brotherly love. " In place of the old bour-
geois society with its classes and class antagonisms we shall have
an association in which the free development of each is the condi-
tion for the free development of all."''
Marx's theory of classes, then, was poorly representati\'c of
what was happening, because he made his classes too "hard and
fast," or in other words because the particular groups which he
' Communist Manifesto, p. 16.
* Essays on the Materialistic Interpretation 0} History, p. 54.
3 Neue Zeit, May, 1903, pp. 241, 242.
4 Communist Manifesto, p. 22.
468 TIIF. PROCESS OF G0VP:RNMENT
(allid classes were abstractions; Vx-cause his theory merely indi-
cated a connection but did not attempt to work out the position
of the discussion groui^s among the others, and because the economic
basis of groupings was overemphasized in too crude a form.
Turn now to Ludwig Gumplowicz, the writer who, so far as
my accjuaintance with such literature goes, has taken the most
important step toward bringing out clearly the nature of the
group process. With him we get away from identification with a
single class in the community, and we find the group activities
given a much wider and firmer foundation. He reflects the process
at longer range, is as he stands much more remote from the field
of acute struggle, but also offers a much more effective agency for
any group interests that ultimately avail themselves of his point
of view to state themselves in a way to develop their powers in
accordance with the requirements of their situations.
Gumplowicz' works are so well known that I will merely
indicate cursorily the points of his theory. He discards the indi-
vidual as a causal factor in society, and insists that all social
movements are brought about by group interactions. " When two
or more distinct groups come in contact, when each enters the
sphere of the other's operations, a social process always ensues."*
He assumes the polygenetic origin of man, because he finds at the
beginning of history innumerable separate small groups. When
two or more of these groups clash, social structure begins to form,
and not tUl then. Indeed it forms only when one group is absorbed
by another and made a lower class in the resulting compound
society. He holds that in general the classes that count most in
the structure of society are classes that have thus been taken in
from without and reduced from independent to dependent elements.
As a rule classes arise originally, i. e., out of different ethnical elements, or
by the permanent organization of such as are at different stages of develop-
ment at the time of their union.'
But he adds classes that appear by internal differentiation.
' Outlines 6J Sociology, p. 85.
' Ibid., p. 136.
DEVELOPMENT OF GROUP INTERPRETATION 469
And even as to the origin of the classes of unequal power that
compose the state he admits that
it might happen (?) as an exception that a period of peaceful development
should result in the differentiation of the population into classes, the stronger
gradually separating themselves from those who were weaker and needed
protection.
For later stages of society he finds it necessary to take into
account classes mainly of secondary origin, and when he gives us
a table of the "group-making factors," he includes situations
which as we find them are certainly far removed from the " original "
group foundation. He interprets government in terms of these
classes. His series of groups is, primarily, hordes, tribes, com-
munities, peoples, states, and nations; and his classes are based
on propinquity, profession, rank, property, trade, religion, language,
art, and so forth.
He makes, however, a sharp distinction between social and
psycho-social phenomena. The social are the group processes;
the psycho-social are such phenomena as language, morals, law,
religion, and systematic knowledge. These are treated by him
as a sort of nondescript modification of the psychic life of individuals
caused by the group process and occasionally requiring to be recog-
nized as themselves causes in interpretation, but not as themselves
really phenomena of group activity. It is hard to do justice to
Gumplowicz with reference to these last-mentioned elements in
his system, because his own statements arc frequently inconsistent.'
Nevertheless, despite some lapses of a kind I will mention in a
moment, he is on the whole very solid in his insistence that rights
are produced by the conflict of social groups, coming neither from
the individual nor from any "common will," but from a struggle
intermediate between these two statements ;* and in such assertions
as this concerning legislation that "the only possible solution of
the social question lies in a harmonious co-operation of the social
groups so far as that is possible. "^
' See Sociologie und Politik, sec. 33; Outlines, Part IV.
' Outlines, p. 178; Cf. Soziologisclie Essays, p. 53.
i Outlines, p. 156.
470 Tin-: I'ROCKSS OF GOVERNMENT
Croups which Gumplovvicz uses in his interpretations are groups
thai arc- concrete in the sense that they are composed of so many
(lilTcnnl \)vo\)\v who can be gathered together in physical separation
from other groups. In general they are groups of such character
tliat a man can belong only to one of them. They are not groups
as 1 have used the word in early chapters, but classes of an extreme
tyjx?. I do not mean to say that in the illustrations which Gumplo-
wicz uses he never takes groups of any different nature, but that
his tendency is to interpret the social process directly in terms of
such groups, and not to make the further analysis into the under-
lying specific interest groups which they represent.^
This is one defect in his system as it stands. Another is that
he has left the "psycho-social" phenomena in an awkwardly
nondescript position, as I have already indicated. With groups
as "concrete" as his, it will be hard indeed to assimilate these
other phenomena to groups, and inasmuch as he could not make
them purely individual phenomena, lest they return and take
bitter vengeance on his system, he hung them in the air " betwixt
and between."
In connection with these defects we find him at one time insisting
that in the group struggle "the only motive is self-interest"^ and at
another telling us that "men grow accustomed year by year to
submit to rights; they use legal forms constantly and learn to
respect rightful limitations, until finally the conception, the very
idea, of rights pervades and controls them."^ We find him using
"material, economic, and moral (intellectual) ""* standards along-
side one another as tests in the classification, regardless of the
various degrees of representativeness of the material he is handling.
We find him at one time denying the existence of a " common will"^
and at another insisting that the inoculation of all individuals
' For his own statement of the complexity of group formation in the class
see Sociologie und Politik, p. 73, and Outlines, p. 143. My point is not that he
does not make this distinction, but that he does not develop it and use it.
' Outlines, p. 145.
3 Ibid., pp. 148, 149.
•• Ibid., p. 142.
s Die sociologische Staatsidee, 2d ed., p. 3.
DEVELOPMENT OF GROUP INTERPRETATION 471
whatsoever with the " higher morahty " is the supreme goal of the
state.'
A special illustration of tlie way in which Gumplowicz allows
a very marked non-groupal factor, in the form of an idea not
broken down into its representative characteristics, to intrude into
his interpretations, is his assertion that the "neu aufgetauchte
Idee" of the " Rechtsstaat " had a very powerful influence upon
German and Austrian law-making and administration in the
middle of last century.^ The fact which he indicates in this
manner is, of course, not to be denied, that there was activity in
transforming legislation and administration, and that the "Rechts-
staat" was prominently mentioned as present. We may allow
to Gumplowicz the implied belief that the "Rechtsstaat" idea
itself can be explained as a psycho-social product of group factors.
But much more than that is necessary. The "Rechtsstaat" must
be functioned in its representative value in group terms at the
very hour and place of its alleged working in order to find its
value. When Gumplowicz gives the "idea" itself such potency
as he does, he merely indicates one spot at which his theory is not
adequately elaborated. In the same passage we find him also
attributing to the idea, "von den socialen Aufgaben des Staates,"
the impulse to a series of social reformatory laws and institutions,
thus again stopping his analysis half way.
It therefore appears that Gumplowicz despite all his defiance
of the "ideas" still leaves them as "there," as to a great extent
undigested lumps of matter in his system. He gets around them
for the most part mainly by rejecting them as unimportant products
of group action on the individual, and when he finds cases in which
he cannot thus reject them, he has trouble in handling them, or
rather he makes no pretense of handling them, but swallows them
raw.
We may interpret the classes, as he makes use of them, as being
a good representation of the Austrian life as he is surrounded by it
I Outlines, p. 169; Cf. also Die sociologische Staatsidee, p. 52, for his use of
"Daseinsbedingungen der Gcsammtheit."
» Die sociologiscJie Staatsidee, p. 24.
472 I in: I'ROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
looked at from a sprcially limited point of view. His theory is
cold and remote from the particular j^oups in the Austrian struggle,
but it is nevertheless focused too closely on struggles of that particu-
lar tyiK- which are so specialized and set in their forms, that they
do not open the way to the fullest and freest interpretation of the
group procedure.
From Gumplowicz turn to Georg Simmel. Here is a man
whose work seemingly stands in the sharpest contrast to the other's,
but whose acute analysis has nevertheless admirably supplemented
the blunter studies of his Austrian contemporary; and the two
can be made to fit together so aptly for the practical purposes of
further study, that one even hesitates to assign to Simmel the lesser
rank in achievement. If one were to judge these two men by
current standards of mental power or delicacy, one would probably
place Simmel far in the lead; but this merely serves to illustrate
the relativity of such judgments. Since Simmel's work gains
its main practical value in the matter of group interpretation by
its supplementary aid to Gumplowicz, the latter is no doubt the
more important figure from this point of view.
Wliat Simmel has accomplished, primarily in his little book,
Ueber sociale Differenzierung, -and then in the brilliant studies that
have followed it, is the analysis of the groups which cross one another
in a thousand directions in the social mass, and at whose inter-
sections "personality" and "individuality," he holds, are to be
found. Taking the facts wherever he finds them most suitable for
his purpose, Simmel has traced the group lines, and endeavored
to make clear many of the typical forms in which group relations
occur. But here is his defect. He has done this in terms of a
psychology which is itself not simple process, but is too often a
content which obtrudes with crude persistence into all his analysis ;
a defect which is all the stronger since he himself has done excellent
work in banishing the most generalized forms of ideas and feelings
from their pretentious appearance in social interpretation.'
» "Parerga zur Socialphilosophie," Jahrbuch fur Gesetzgebung, etc., Vol. i8,
p. 258. Also in his Einkitung in die M oralwissenschaft.
DEVELOPMENT OF GROUP INTERPRETATION 473
This defect appears in a double way. The forms which he
gives us are primarily psychological, not social, or rather I may
put it that his standards in classifying waver between social and
individual psychological; and secondly, the detached feelings and /
desires and ideas continually appear to give force and power to the / l/C /
social process in their quality as individual content underlying and/ / ~ .
preceding the social forms and structures.
I will refer briefly to a number of passages taken almost at
random from his writings to illustrate this. He tells us, for example,^
that "spiritual structures" like language, morals, church, law, and
political organization, although standing over against the individual
as something objective, nevertheless "have their existence only in
personal minds." "Every attempt," he says, "to think of them
outside of persons is a mysticism." Then he appends this little
confession of faith: "So far as I can see, this antinomy can be
resolved in only one way. From the point of view of completed
knowledge we must liold unconditionally to the fact that there are
only spiritual individuals." While permitting the treatment of
such structures "as unities" because of our limited vision, his
aim is continuously "to approach nearer to the individual operations
which produce the social structure."
I have no objection whatever to his confession of faith, as such,
nor to his epistemological principle. It is only to the use he makes
of it, wherein he fails to allow his owti group process full sweep,
that I object. Instead of holding to the groups as groups and
remembering his own demonstration that individuality occurs
where the group lines cross, he uses all sorts of fragments of
individuality as material of explanation. For instance, he says
that the interpretation of religion can "only be approached when
all the impulses, ideas, and conditions operating in its domain are
inventoried."' It is "our most real and personal instinct," he
says, which enforces moral commands upon us.^ Again: "The
actually dissociating elements are the causes of conflict — hatred
and envy, want and desire."'*
' American Journal of Sociology, Vol. Ill, p. 665.
' Ibid., Vol. XI, p. 359. 3 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 184. 4 Ibid., Vol. IX, p. 490.
474 IHK PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
Alon^' with this we find Simrncl tacitly assuming that social
|)r()^fss is a concomitant of i)rain progress, as in his illustration
of the monasteries and their influence on heredity,' and in such a
reference as that of the coming to consciousness of latent mental
inheritances.' Also we fmd him over and over again attributing
things to the "group will," or discussing events in terms of a
group unity or a social unity. For instance, he contrasts with
majority rule which is the mere dominance of the strong, a unitary
group will, and he holds the distinction to be of the highest sociologi-
cal importance.^ Here we fmd him saying that "the immanent
principle " of our parliamentary system is that " the majority does
not speak in its own name but in that of the ideal unity and totality."
In other words, he knows brute strength on one side and a cohesive
power of ideas on the other side, but he does not really function
them together, and he makes his own interpretations of "socializa-
tion" on the idea side. Thus he explains the persecution of
heretics as springing from "the instinct which recognizes the neces-
sity for group unity."4
Now as the result of this point of view we get from Simmel such
classifications as that of the elements which make for the persistence
of groups; in which territory, blood relationship, loyalty, and
honor are put in a series.^ We get so thin an explanation of
the predominance of ruler over ruled as that the ruler gives all his
personality to the arrangement, while the ruled only give up small
bits of their personalities.*^ We get a series of form types of groups
like the trinity — "the unpartisan and the mediator, the 'tertius
gaudcns' and the 'divide et impera.'"' Even so solid an inter-
pretation as that of the lie and its suppression, in which the fact is
brought out that each lie injures a great many more persons than
it benefits,* we get stated more as a psychic curiosity than as a
piece of powerful pushing human life.
' Ueber sociale Difjerenzierung, p. 130.
' Die Probleme der Geschichtsphihsophie, p. 25.
3 American Journal oj Sociology, Vol. II, pp. 1S2, 183.
4 Ibid., Vol. XI, p. 371. Cf. also Vol. Ill, p. 683.
5 American Journal 0} Sociology, Vol. Ill, pp. 667-83.
" Ibid., Vol. II, p. 174. 7 Ibid., Vol. VIII, p. 166. 8 7Jid., Vol. XI, p. 447.
DEVELOPMENT OF GROUP INTERPRETATION 475
I would be far from saying that there was not much of the great-
est value in even these interpretations that I have been criticizing.
The trouble is only that one has to push down below them and
straighten them out a little farther to get the statement in terms
in which one can depend upon it. For the rest I imagine that
almost all the typical social relations — and very many others
besides — which have been discussed in this book will be found
treated by Simmel, some of them in the most highly suggestive
way.
But through it all, and despite the fundamental importance of
his analysis of the intersecting groups, his manner of interpretation
remains thin, and at times unreal. He has not really transformed
the old individual ideas and feelings into group phenomena; he
treats them independently, making his interpretations all too often
in terms of the idea factors alone, not in terms of the social habit
in which they rest; and, often as he recurs to the topic, he does
not once, to my notion, get down to square, out and out, discus-
sion of the underlying force and stability in those situations which,
as in cases of survivals and of half-developed tendencies, seem to
the superficial view to be made up of ideas and of nothing else.
His society is, so to speak, pasted together with ideas and feelings,
and not really shown in its tremendous cohesiveness as a mass of
immense human pressures. In a way, the fault with him is much
the same as is the fault with Gumplowicz, striking as arc the
contrasts between them in other respects; in both, the idea and
feeling factors are still largely an undigested mass and so the
cause of scientific indigestion.
Taken as a bit of the general social activity itself, Simmel's
work then represents the social world more as it appears to the
individual engaged in the process than as it appears from a point
of view which gets away from that of the acting individual and
looks upon the process as proceeding through him. Even his
analysis of the crossing of the social groups was more a by-product
of his investigation of personality than a direct interpretation of
social process. His activity therefore has less meaning, less value,
as mediating the group process than that of the other writers I
476 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
am lure- discussing. By the same token that it cannot directly be
referred to national, class, or occupational activities for its origin
like the others, it cannot in turn be referred back to them so readily
in its functioning.
One other writer who has aided in developing the group method
of inleri)retation requires mention. Gustav Ratzenhofer has
provided us much excellent description of the practical processes
of politics from a groupal point of view. How excellent this work
is one can readily discover by reading Part IV of Professor Small's
General Sociology, in which Ratzenhofer's results are set forth,
not only sympathetically, but in a manner that is frequently a
decided improvement on Ratzenhofer himself. His categories,
while not delinitive — no one looks for such as yet — must be taken
into account by all students in this field.
Unfortunately, Ratzenhofer was not content to take the facts
as they paraded themselves before the exceptionally weU-located
window which his position in life ofTered him through which to
observe them, but instead he felt impelled to swathe them in an
exceedingly wearisome and maladroit metaphysics, which he
called positive monism, but which one may well describe — with
apologies to a jest that was current not so many years since — as
neither positive nor monistic. He w^as not content with the
interests as they presented themselves in social group forms in the
world around him, but insisted on developing behind them a
world of "inherent interests."' Here he sets up a hierarchy of
racial, physiological, individual (egoistic), social, and transcen-
dental interests.^ With this metaphysics he deems himself advan-
cing beyond Gumplowicz,^ but in reality he is retrograding.
' Der positive Monismus, p. 105. "Das inharente Interesse — das in der
StofiFconstellation des Organismus wurzelnde individuelle Streben — zwingt zur
Ausftihrung der gebotenen Absicht durch den Willen, d. i. die im- Organismus
zur Befriedigung des inharenten Interesses bereite potentielle Energie." Here
we have a whole family of spooks to work the wires. Of how little use the inherent
interest is except to bridge over a gap in Ratzenhofer's own analysis will be evident
from such a sentence as the following {ibid., p. 112): "Im Grunde genommen
kann aber der weitsichtigste Gedanke auf nichts anderes gerichtet sein als auf die
Erfiillung eines concreten Interesses auf Grund des inharenten."
» Die sociologisclit Erkenntniss, sec. 6. 3 Ibid., pp. 288, 289.
DEVELOPMENT OF GROUP INTERPRETATION 477
Connected with this is the necessity he feels for giving every
variety of group he discusses its own individuality or personality. ^
The group has its spiritual unity, its own will. He thinks by nam-
ing the will he makes progress in explaining the facts, when the
real problem of interpretation is always to get to a point at which
it is possible to drop entirely the use of that very word.
Having set up these group personalities or group interests as
independent from the individual interests, he arrives finally at the
fundamental sociological law — "the reciprocal adaptation of the
individual and the social interests."^ As an outgrowth of this
he attaches ideas, and at times instincts, to these fictitious group
unities, and this leads him, despite all that he says over and over
again of the derivative character of the ideas, to give them an
exaggerated place in his system. Thus he allows the "Zeitgeist"
to rule unchecked in many of his interpretations.^ Also he crystal-
lizes instead of reducing to simpler terms his set of "political
principles" and "political systems. "■* Finally he comes out at the
end, after having begun with a good working system of groups
and passed through a maze of metaphysics, to a finish in which he
avers that sociology as one of these group soul things in and for
itself should be able to remake the world. It should "lead to
promotion of the common weal on a level above that of naive
empiricism, viz., on that of conscious and purposeful action ;"s since
human progress comes mainly "through the integration of ideas,
through the intellectual control of the microcosm, through the
formation of general ideas."^ He falls back therefore into the
old error of the naive speech forms, and his idea factors are there-
fore much farther from being stated at their true representative
value at the end of his work than they were at the beginning.
In the very structure of his main work, his defect stands out
' Ibid., sec. 20.
' Krilik des Intellects, p. 149.
3 Wesen und Zweck der Politik, Vol. I, pp. 96 B.
* Ibid., sees. 14, 15. For illustrations of a similar nature, see Ibid., Vol- I,
pp. 143, 237; Vol. Ill, p. 64; Die sociologische Erkenntniss, pp. 64, 256, 257.
5 American Journal 0} Sociology, Vol. X, p. 177.
^Ibid., p. 178.
/T
478 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
promincnlly, for he holds the struggle phase of life apart from the
civilization jihase. Professor Small, while omitting very much
of the mysticism from Ratzenhofer, has followed him in this>
giving separate parts in his General Sociology to these two phases.
As a soldier, Ratzenhofer appreciated struggle in a verj' realistic
way; indeed he was too "realistic" about it, for he understood it
under the guise of "absolute hostility" ("die absolute Feindselig-
keit"). Such absolute hostility being a fiction, nowhere to be
discovered in the given world, Ratzenhofer was impelled to add
to it as its complement a civilization phase of social process, which
he first came to appreciate through the tender heart of his wife.'
But this civilization phase is just as fictitious as the absolute hostil-
ity phase, and if one gets them functioned together in the social
process one will no longer have need of any system of "inherent
interests" as sticking plaster. The "concrete interests" will be
material enough in themselves. I can state this in a different way
by saying that what Ratzenhofer means by the civilization phase,
instead of being an independent phase of the social process, is a
reflection of certain group oppositions on the discussion level, with
a varying value in varying situations. Or again, by saying that
the individual and the social interests, instead of being different
factors in opposition to each other are merely different methods
of stating the same thing, so that a complete statement in terms
of the individual interest would cover exactly what a complete
statement in terms of the social interest will cover, no more and no
less; which makes it clear enough that the two never can be added
together as complementary. Not both at once but either the one
or the other, is what the investigator must take.
I find that I have been criticizing these authors rather than
interpreting their good work, but I will let it stand, seeing that
what is most essential at the present stage of the study of society
is after all to get a clear grasp of a good method of work which
will reduce the number of unassimilated and misleading elements
to a minimum. I can only make amends by expressly recognizing
the substantial results all of them have achieved, and my outi
' See the Introduction to Die positive Ethik.
DEVELOPMENT OF GROUP INTERPRETATION 479
personal indebtedness to the first three. I hope further that I
have succeeded in making it appear how m all of these cases the
works as they stand do but reflect phases of the group process,*
how they have value and meaning only as they reflect phases of
it with accuracy, and how even the most accurate reflection has
value only as process through which the underlying interests work
somewhat more smoothly ; how, further, in all of some of the works
and in some parts of all of them the reflection is primarily identified
with special groups notably forceful in the social process, and
how even where such identification with forceful groups is hard
to make, where the reflection is at longest range and of the group
process as such, it is but the manner of statement of a very small
specialized group of workers in an outlying field, and can claim
an ultimate value only so far as it proves useful in the actual opposi-
tion of interests in bringing about a clearer statement and smoother
process — a degree of mediative value which can only be measured
with the result or at most estimated roughly in immediate use, but
can by no means be boasted presumptuously in advance.
This sketch of the development of group interpretation has
only touched the high places. To make it at all complete it would
be necessary to add mention of the class interpretations by Marxists,
of whom Loria may serve as a type; and to describe the many
works which are substantially interpreting society in terms of
groups, despite their own failure to reach a theoretical statement
in such terms. Jhering's interpretations have been most admirable,
although his psychological manner of statement distorted his work
so that his emphasis was not placed on the groups as such. Lorenz
von Stein, when one penetrates below his ''personlicher Wille und
Bewusstsein" to his study of "Krafte und Gestaltungen," and
especially of the "Vereine," certainly deserves mention. So also
does Spencer in many phases of his Sociology. Durkheim's
objective interpretation takes a good step on the road toward the
• In the case of my own variation of group interpretation, I think that any
experienced reader can easily determine its representative character in terms of
American life of the last decade.
48o THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
use of grouf)s, and in this country Professor Patten, Dean Bigelow,
and Brooks Adams should not be overlooked. With this could
proi>erly go an examination of the extent to which various estab-
lished schools of thought in the social sciences have themselves
been reflections of group points of view. The various phases of
{K)litical economy would be found especially illuminating in this
resiK'ct. I mention all these only to pass them by at this time.
CHAPTER XXIII
CONCLUSION
If I have at any point given the impression that I think there
is any special claim of "originality" to be made for the method of
group interpretation set forth in this volume, it is due to faulty
phrasing on my part. Originality, in aflairs of this kind, is mainly
sensationalism, a matter of headlines, but not of the body of the
tale.
On the contrary, it is just because I am convinced that the group
factors which are used in all interpretations of bits of society are
the solid and substantial parts of such interpretations, that I have
ventured to attempt to bring the method out into a more explicit
form. Wliether we have to do with a history of the older style
or with a modem essay on social reform, with a Utopia or with a
political pamphlet, and in whatever language the work is garbed,
it seems to me that the only part that counts for our purposes is the
part that reflects fairly and sg^uarely the CToups as they are. The
rest has its meaning in the proce^, but that very meaning must be
stated in group terms before we can be sure that we know it accu-
rately.
We often hear it said that history must be rewritten with each
generation; and that is manifestly a truth when we are thinking
of the forms in which history embodies itself with reference to the
group oppositions — otherwise, to the problems, or, more vaguely
still, if you will, to the "spirit" — of the times. But from this
point of view the same may be said of science, or of any field of
science. Nevertheless, in a more important sense it is not true.
There have been forming underneath the various dressings of
history a substantial backbone and skeleton of accepted relations. '
And this backbone will only vary with the generations as it varies
now while being more accurately worked out. We can easily con-
ceive of a solid structure of group relationships as they have devel-
481
482 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
o|H(i in historic timos becoming known to us, which must inevi-
tably dclinf the- fundamental shapes which the history-writing that
varies with the generations must take, if it is to have meaning and
value at all beyond the meaning and value of the most narrowly
partisan outcry. Given the analysis into groups, then Tylor's
suggestion of method,' which has so long remained unfruitful
Ix'cause of the lack of a unified point of view in the statement of the
materials to be compared, should at once become available on a
great scale.
But, of course, this work of formulating the backbone of history
is not to be the work of a day or a year, but of many men through
many years, perhaps through many generations. Toilsome obser-
vation and analysis, real laboratory work with society, will be
necessary for it. With all the contributions that have as yet been
made to it, I doubt if we can find any that are so exactly stated
that they can survive as they are now stated. The gold is there,
but partly in compounds, and partly mixed wath much dross.
To enable this work of establishing reliable statements of the
group facts to make more rapid progress, the method by which the
dross can be eliminated and the compounds broken down must be
clearly worked out, not necessarily in detail, but on a basis which
will jK^rmit of the detail being filled in without altering the main
features of the method itself. The tool must be fashioned, but it
muTri be fashioned out of materials which in cruder forms are now
available to the workers' hands.
I To a certainty it is among the psychic factors, or psychic phases,
I or psychic what-you-will, of our social life that the labor of eliminat-
I ing the dross must be carried on. To a certainty the worst con-
fusions of our present interpretations lie here where elements enter
which presistently assert their independence and persistently
maintain themselves against reduction to a common denominator
along with the facts which are stated in other than specifically
psychic terms. To a certainty, however, any tool or method which,
while eliminating the dross here, eliminates at the same time much
of the gold, will be useless. Probably it will be worse than useless.
' Journal of tite Anthropological Institute, Vol. XVIII.
CONCLUSION 483
It is our business to find out what values the discussio-i and
theorizing forms of the social process have in terms of all the rest of
the process, to find out what values the organization forms have
in terms of all of the rest of the process, and specifically what
values these two forms have in terms of each other.
It is our business to weigh the pressure of each bit of organiza-
tion and of discussion as specialized; to weigh it in terms of the
masses of men, who, not visible to the eye — I might say to the
naked eye — as parts of the discussion or organization, are never-
theless its bearers and the givers of all the strength that is in it;
finally to estimate as exactly as may be the plus of strength which,
from any specially limited point of view, must be attributed to the
organization or to the discussion groups, considered for the moment
by themselves as technical agencies.
I have nowhere in this volume attempted to set forth results in
particular cases of interpretation. I have, indeed, ventured the
assertion that while the discussion groups are essential phases of the
human social process which we nowhere know of without them,
and while in their elaborated forms they correspond in many
respects with the elaboration of the underlying interest groups
which often could not function except in connection with them, so
far as our observation of process goes, yet nevertheless in particular
cases of interpretation, when stripped of their superficial forms
such as the special turns of wording they use, and reduced to their
proper meanings at given times and places, they are entitled to
little emphasis as independently considered technique. And
further, that any tracing of the chronological lines of such groups
considered independently can throw but little light on the actual
development process of the society, however interesting it may be
for its decorative elTects. Similarly for the organization groups I
have asserted that it is only in transition phases of society due to
shifting of group balances that they appear to have notable inde-
pendent power, and that here as little as in the case of discussion
phases can the lines of development be traced from organization
form to organization form without continuous and complete inter-
pretation in terms of what groupal structure is underlying. But
484 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
these arc merely incidental views. They partake more of an antici-
pation of results than of a statement of method.
This in the end may not be denied, that whatever tools of method
we devise for the tasks that are to be done, they can only prove
tlicir value in the using — in the using by many workers, not by
one, or by two, or by three.
APPENDIX
APPENDIX
The positions set forth in the preceding chapters have not been assumed
without many efforts to measure the strength of the pressures which are in
play underneath the superficial appearance of political struggles in the United
States. Such investigations can have little meaning or value except to men who
see in them short steps toward an exact analysis of social activity. Men who
can simplify society to their own satisfaction by the use of convenient catch-
words or who have naive faith in the "truth" and power of arguments will
inevitably regard them only as a waste of time and energy.
What may be called a qualitative analysis of the interests is nearly always
possible if the investigator will seek out the proper sources of information and
take the proper steps to tap them. For quantitative tests of the pressures —
barring the possibilities in the use of co-operative estimates — the difficulties
in the way are much more serious. Nevertheless even here there are many
tempting fields thus far little utilized. For example, the machine organization
of politics, where it is rankly developed, furnishes many opportunities for tests
of its strength, both as exhibited at the polls in contrast with the strength of
other forms of organization, and in connection with the social wastes produced
by its exploitation of government agencies. With this the effect of civil service
reform on machine power could well be tested by comparisons between cities
and between states, with correlative use of figures from the federal government's
experience. My own collection of partially worked up figures is not, however,
sufficiently complete to justify any quantitative statement of conclusions at
this stage.
I wish, however, to set forth in the briefest possible way the outlines of three
investigations, which offer, it is true, little more than a preliminary showing
of what is possible in this field, but which are nevertheless sufficiently far
advanced to justify provisional conclusions. For two reasons it was not desir-
able to incorporate the material in the text; first, because what I have to offer
should not be regarded in any sense as proof of any theoretical position taken,
but merely as an illustration of the character of the results that may be reached
from the given point of view; second, because any direct use of the material
should include full details of methods and a carefully conditioned statement of
results, for which space is not available.
I. MUNICIP.^L-OWNERSHIP INTEREST GROUPS IN CHICAGO
Between 1902 and 1907 Chicago voted at referendum in every year except
1903 on one or more phases of the problem of municipalizing the ownership
of street railways. Six out of a total of eleven such votes were studied to detect
487
488 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
so far as possible the difference in the manner in which residents in different
parts of the city reacted at different stages of the municipal-ownership move-
ment and upon different phases of it. The study was made by election pre-
cincts, approximately 1,250 in number. For each vote the city was districted
into from 229 to 265 districts of varying reaction, these districts casting averages
of from 1,000 to 1,500 votes each. The material was sufficiently free from
error to give full confidence in results for districts of this size. The assembling
of the precincts into districts was made on the basis of the relative degree of
interest in municipal ownership which was shown in the precincts separately.
The percentages of the municipal-ownership vote, first in the vote on the propo-
sition, and then in the total vote cast at the election, were figured for each
precinct; and for each set of precinct percentages separately the sextile pre-
cincts were ascertained as a guide in constructing the districts. Large maps of
the city in six colors corresponding to the sextiles were then prepared for each
vote, and for each way of computing, making twelve maps in all.
General contrasts. — The maps showed that the relative strength of the
municipal-ownership policy, both in the vote on the proposition and in the
total vote cast, was at first much greater in what may be called the select resi-
lience regions and in the outlying residence regions than it was either in the
slum or factory regions. In the latest votes this relation had been just reversed.
Hyde Park, Englewood, the West Side residence district, and to a lesser extent
Lake View, were relatively strong at first and weak at the end. The river
factory region and the stockyards region were weak at the beginning and strong
at the end. This was especially marked when comparison was made between
the vote in 1904 by which the city accepted a state law empowering it to own
and operate street railways, and the vote in 1907 by which carefully guarded
franchises were given to the street-car companies. The interpretation of this
is that at the start "municipal ownership" as a policy meant — that is, "repre-
sented"— an interest in improved street-railway service to an important pro-
portion of the residents of the main street-car-using sections, while at the end
traction settlement meant the same thing to these elements of the population.
A fair inference is that while municipal ownership did not have relatively great
meaning or interest at the start to sections which do not use street cars so regu-
larly, it came at the end to represent in these sections an interest very different
from what it purported to be. These meanings existed entirely apart from
formal arguments on the question in any section.
Outlying territory. — A general tendency to the progressive extension of
strong municipal-ownership interest toward the farther outlying parts of the
city was noticed, which reached its culmination in 1905; though in 1907 the
elsewhere receding wave carried farther in spots and hit one or tA;\-o very small
extreme outlying districts. A tabulation of the votes in a broad band of out-
lying territory extending entirely around the city (33,200 votes cast in 1905,
APPENDIX 489
38,900 in 1907) showed, with very slight change in the proportions of partisan
mayoralty votes, a municipal ownership decrease from 52 to 39 per cent, of
all votes cast (city averages decrease 46 to 40), and an antimunicipal -ownership
increase from 16 to 53 per cent, (city averages increase 18 to 49). With an
increase of 5,700 voters, municipal ownership lost absolutely almost 2,000
votes. Nothing but the car-service needs of the population in both years can
explain the high vote of the first of these two years or the low vote of the second.
Stratification of the vote. — In 1907 especially, and to a great extent in other
years there was a very marked stratification of the vote in certain parts of the
city. It was most marked on the West Side where numerous bands of contrast-
ing interest running generally from northeast to southwest could be detected.
Some of these bands have to do with characteristics of the population dating
from early settlement, and others seem to have to do with transportation lines
as affecting population; but opportunity has not yet been found to study them
systematically.
Districts of persistent relative interest. — These were occasionally found,
though largely obscured by the great shifts of interest in the city as a whole.
A number of single precincts were found which retained an almost unbroken
interest (as measured by the sextile scale) relative to the rest of the city; and a
number of larger districts which retained a steady position relative to the sur-
rounding territory.
The influence of the worst car lines. — By means of comparisons based on
the sextile scales of the years 1905 and 1907 it was possible to measure the
relative change of interest of residents along the worst car lines (the West and
North Side cables) as compared with the change among residents of surrounding
territory. The strips chosen extended to one-sixth of a mile on each side of
the respective car lines, being thus one-third of a mile wide. Preliminary
experiments were necessary, in lieu of weighting for heaviness of tratlc, to
establish the outer and inner limits of the strips. Tests were then made to
determine whether the tendency away from municipal ownership and toward
traction settlement was relatively strong among residents of these strips. For
three lines, Blue Island, West Madison, and Clark and Lincoln (these latter
two treated as one), the tests showed such a tendency. One line, Milwaukee,
gave partially favorable results. For another line, Clybourn, the tests were
wholly unfavorable. This gives three fully satisfactory tests out of five. The
composition of the Milwaukee strip was, however, very unsatisfactorj', owing
to an interfering Polish community of highly specialized reaction. Both the
Blue Island and Clybourn strips had some unsatisfactory features in their
makeup. The two lines of heaviest traffic and best definition gave very strong
favorable results. As measured by the index numbers used, the West Madison
strip showed a decline in municipal ownership interest from 43 to 36, while
surrounding territory declined only from 50 to 47; and Clark and Lincoln
49© tiil: i'R(jcess of government
showed a dfclinc from 38 to 35 while surrounding territory increased from 40 to
4a. The detection of one such influence does not, of course, prove that the
entire voting activity was conditioned solely by a complex of such influences;
but the detection of this influence, considering the poor facilities of investigation
and the imperfect methods available, gives at least an added substantiality to
the jxjsition assumeil in this book that it is only in such group interests that the
meaning and values of ideas can be found.
The mayoralty election and the municipal ownership issue in ipo§. — Curves
prepared to show the relation between the referendum vote and the votes for
the mayoralty candidates in 1905, based on the municipal-ownership districts
on the map for that year, brought out no general correlation except between
the vote for municipal ownership and the vote for the democratic candidate,
and very little there. The relation between the municipal-ownership vote and
the Democratic mayoralty vote was, however, further investigated with a view
to detecting variations with respect to locality, if any. Upon a study of the
districts in detail it appeared that two large regions differentiated themselves
clearly. In a "slum" region, including the downtown Ward i, the greater
part of Ward 9, and the eastern parts of Wards 18 and 19, the issue ran far
behind the candidate. In an outlying region, encircling the city, the issue ran
far ahead of the candidate. Excluding these two regions, and studying the
remainder of the city, it was possible by the aid of a simple, four-membered
scale, showing the average percentages of municipal ownership strength for four
grades of Democratic candidate's strength, to isolate six other territorially
coherent areas, in which the municipal ownership reactions were either notably
above or notably below the averages by the scale. In South Chicago and
Pullman the issue was far behind scale strength based on mayoralty strength,
for all degrees of the latter. In a large region including Hyde Park and Engle-
wood the issue ran ahead of scale. In a still larger region to the north of this,
including Wards 2 to 5, together with the stockyards region and the factory
region along the south branch of the Chicago River, the issue ran behind. In
the main residence part of the West Side the issue was ahead. In the factory
district, along the north branch of the river, the issue was again behind. The
North Side of the city, which remained, showed a less marked t}-pical reaction,
but was itself capable of subdivision into a number of smaller regions of con-
trasted reaction. Each of these six regions contained both strong Democratic
and strong Republican territory. There were, of course, some divergencies
from the t>'pe inside the limits of each of the regions, but they were not of great
area, and were even less important when the degree of divergence as well as
its area was considered. The divergence of the issue from expected scale
strength was thus established in a total of eight regions in the city, distinguish-
able trora one another by special characteristics, ha\dng to do with the use
made in them respectively of traction facilities.
APPENDIX . 491
The mayoralty election and the municipal ownership issue in igoj. — This
campaign was fought with hnes much more closely drawn between the candi-
dates and the issues. The tests here were made upon the traction vote and
the Republican candidate's vote. By a first test "slum" and outlying regions
were found, closely corresponding to those before found. In both of them,
however, the candidate ran far behind what would have been expected of him
in territory of similar traction strength, considering the city as a whole. An-
other region also appeared, namely, the candidate's "own" wards, over
which he holds a boss's sway. Here he ran heavily ahead by the same test.
For the rest of the city a different test was used, namely, direct comparisons
between the candidate's and the traction percentages. Regions approximately
corresponding to those of 1905 could be mapped out, the candidate showing
weakness under traction-settlement strength in just those sections of the city
in which two years before the municipal-ownership issue had shown exceptional
strength in proportion to the Democratic candidate's vote. For the whole
city the only exception to this tendency was the "slum" area, where the Repub-
lican candidate was weaker than traction in 1907, while the Democratic candi-
date had been much stronger than normal in proportion to the given municipal-
ownership strength in 1905. In other words, as between these two elections
the "slum" area was the only one which showed what is commonly called
logical consistency, but what anyone acquainted with metropolitan machine
politics knows in this case at least to have been something very different.
True "consistency" was found where the same underlying interest expressed
itself in opposite ways on a "policy" at different stages in that policy's
progress.
The meaning 0} the Socialist vote in igo^. — In 1905 the Socialist mayoralty
candidate received 23,000 votes, almost double what the party candidate
received either two years earlier or two years later. In this year certain scat-
tered districts of the city showed a much weaker municipal-ownership vote
relatively to the rest of the city than they showed either before or afterward.
It was possible to prove by taking all districts of extreme Socialist strength in
1905 and comparing their relative municipal-ownership strength for 1905 and
1907 (allowance being made for changes in the city as a whole) that cases of
heavy increase in the Socialist vote in 1905 were accompanied by a direct
weakening of the municipal-ownership vote in the given localities. This con-
clusion was confirmed by an additional test which started with the districts
of heaviest relative swing away from municipal ownership in 1905 and toward
it in 1907, and examined them for their Socialist strength. In other words,
in a certain limited part of the population socialism was shown to stand in 1905
in a stronger way for the same things for which municipal ownership stood at
other times. There was also some evidence that in those districts in which
the Socialist vote was most stimulated in 1905, an opposition to it was aroused
492 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
which expressed itself in the unexpected form of an exceptionally heavy vote
against municipal ownership.
A boss's influence. — In 1904 the Mueller law empowering Chicago to under-
take municipal ownership was adopted by referendum vote, despite all the
political machine power the traction companies could employ against it. At
the same time there was another municipal-ownership vote under the "public-
policy" act, which did not have binding force on anybody, and hence was
relatively a matter of indifference to the traction companies. In 1905 at the
mayoralty election the Republican candidate was badly "knifed" in certain
parts of the city. In 1907 the Republican mayoralty candidate received most
enthusiastic machine support while the Democratic candidate was "knifed" to
some extent. In studying Wards 21 to 24, comprising the 1907 Republican
candidate's political fief, in which the 1905 and 1907 phenomena just men-
tioned were most marked, a correlation could be detected between districts in
which the Republican candidate of 1905 was most strongly "knifed" and those
in which the Mueller-bill vote had been specially weak. This correlation did
not appear on the surface for the four wards when taken as a whole, but could
be seen in each of four regions into which the whole territory was capable of
subdivision by tests found in the figures themselves. The showing has interest
both as a measure of boss strength and because of the varying characteristics
of the population in the four regions as distinguished by the varying ranges
of their reaction under this influence.
In all of the investigations above outlined the referendum voting was
treated simply as an activity of the massed voters, having value and meaning
in terms of their underlying interests, which sometimes appeared directly and
at other times in intermediate representative forms. Material for equally
hopeful investigations was at hand in the reactions of massed nationality
groups of the voters, and in a number of instances of stratification which would
have required local study to comprehend. Material was at hand also for analy-
sis of the possibilities of political leadership in many of its minor locality forms.
In other Chicago election figures of recent years there is much material for the
measurement of the extent of machine control of the voters.
II. THE PLAY OF INTERESTS IN A STATE LEGISLATIIRE
An attempt was made to trace the influence of definite external interests
on the Illinois legislature at the session of 1905. The investigation was, how-
ever, limited to bills that became laws. This fact together with the further
fact that the session was, comparatively speaking, "good" made the results
much less complete on the side of oppositions than on the side of initiatives.
Two hundred and twelve measures became law. Forty-nine were appro-
priation bills and one fixed the amount of revenue to be raised. Appropriation
bills are notoriously the result of the pull and haul of interests. To limit the
APPENDIX 493
study to the more doubtful field these 50 laws were removed. That left 162
laws, of which 3 were subdivided, giving 165 entries on the lists. These were
e.xamined in 11 groups according to the character of their subject-matter.
Initiative. — Of the 165 entries, 83 were assigned to administrative initiative,
34 to special interests, 20 to organized public opinion in some one or other of its
definite forms, and 2 to political machines acting for their own direct interest,
leaving only 26 to be assigned to members of the legislature acting in their
theoretical legislative capacity.
Opposition. — -Most bills that become laws do so after a fight with other
bills for a place on the calendar, rather than after a fight with an opposition of
a more direct kind. That fight for place is not taken into account here. Only
49 entries are made as to opposition. In 20 cases the opposition came from
special interests, in 2 cases from machines acting for themselves, and in 3 cases
from organized public opinion. These include a number of cases in which no
negative votes were cast on roll call. In the remaining 24 cases opposition is
credited to legislators in their legislative capacity. To make up this latter
figure all bills were regarded as opposed in this way when over 8 percent, of
the members of either house, or when over 4 per cent, of the members of each
house, voted against them on final roll call.
Other aspects of legislators' activity. — In the senate out of 401 roll calls 113
were contested; in the house out of 353 roll calls 228 were contested. A
single negative vote was enough to cause a roll call to be listed here as contested.
Of the 212 bills that became law 34 had one or more votes cast against them in
the senate and 121 in the house. The average number of negative votes in
the senate (51 members) on all bills that became law was 0.5. The average
number in the house (153 members) was 5 .5. Out of 162 bills (appropriations
e.xcluded) 87 were amended, most of them very slightly; this includes even
trivial corrections of spelling or punctuation. Of the amended bills 22 were
amended in both houses.
The figures as above given allow very liberal proportions to the participa-
tion in law-making that can be ascribed to the membersof the legislature acting
in their theoretical capacity as reasoners and deciders upon questions of public
welfare. Had the bills been weighted for relative importance, the showing of
the legislators' share in the work would have been seen to shrink materially.
A partial attempt at weighting led only to the conclusion that that task should
be performed by co-operative investigation and not by an individual. One
group of laws, those affecting children (eight in number) were framed, discussed,
and all but enacted by a volunteer substitute legislature, composed of delegates
from societies interested in child-saving, which met in Chicago before the
legislature itself assembled.
In this study organized public opinion in all forms was accepted as represen-
tative activity, and no attempt was made to trace its manifestations down to
494 THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
the underlying interests which it represented. The aim was merely to use
categories which would throw a little light on the formal law-making process
in an American state.
III. THE PLAY OF INTERESTS IN A QTY COUNCTL
An investigation somewhat similar to the preceding was made for eleven
meetings of the city council of Chicago, in which i,io8 ordinances, orders, or
resolutions were passed {Proceedings oj the City Council for 1905-6, pp. 1-996).
Only 27 roll calls were contested, affecting only 14 measures. Of the total
number of acts 430 were sent up to the council by the subordinate Board of
Local Improvements. Probably in almost all of them a crude and ill-governed
struggle of interests preceded enactment. Fifty -one others were sent up by
the Board of Education.
Ordinances. — Discarding acts mentioned in the preceding paragraph, the
ordinances passed numbered 136. The results of classification and analysis
showed that 85 were distinctly in private interest, while 28 involved what may
be called a "locality interest." There were 8 that were designed to regulate
or control the pressure of the interests, and 15 that could be classified as outside
the immediate play of the interests.
Orders. — Among 491 orders of the council, analysis showed 211 directly
on behalf of interests, 58 directed against definite interests at special points,
135 to be classified as affecting "locality interests," and 87 not directly to be
classified on such interest lines.
Under the pressure of interests the council gave by ordinance 46 franchise
grants which it had no legal right or power to give. By order it gave 55 dis-
tinctly illegitimate grants. Many of its other acts were gross abuses or marks
of favoritism. Such were 88 special pri\'ileges, including gifts of city property
or services and permits to violate ordinances. Four orders directing the refusal
of ordinance rights to particular individuals form a climax to the system.
The council's own praiseworthy, but feeble, attempts to regulate these pressures
serve but to emphasize the present license.
INDEX
INDEX
Absolute power, 320
Activity, despised by von Jhering, 67;
underlying von Jhering's analysis, 85;
basis of Ward's classification of feel-
ings, 92; the raw material of society,
176; discussed in detail, 184 fif.;
tendencies to, 184 B.; equivalent to
living men in their group life, 203 ff.;
the system phase, 218
Adams, 118
Adaptability, wide range in society, 249
Adonis and Osiris, 270
African tribes, 332
Agencies of government, 321 £f.; the
various lines of differentiation, 323;
the tests for classifying, 322, 326; six
agencies in the United States, 326
Algebra of desires criticized, t,;^
Ammon, 252
Anarchism, philosophical, 302
Anger, 187
Animal societies, 250
Anthracite-coal strike, 349
Aristotle, on slavery, 13; on classifica-
tion of governments, 298
B
Bauer, 254, 257
Beef-trust legislation, 351
Bigelow, 392, 480
Bluntschli, ii8, 311
Boss, and morality, 10; leadership, 228
IT.
Bougie, 121
Brain and social achievement, 16, 21,
249
Bryce, iii, 313, 448
Burgess, 300, 312
Burke, 403
C
Causation, psychic, the billiard-ball
type, 17, 40, 83, 89, 121, 166
Checks and balances, 455
Chicago traction case, 392
China, 269, 301, 334
Church, illustrating balance of interests,
267
City-state, 303
Civic organizations, 431
Clan vengeance, 382
Classes, fictitious, 208; underl}'ing race,
257; defined, 304; their effect on
despotism, 316 ff.; determine type of
legislatures, 360; development in early
societies, 407; function in government,
440; never adequately defined by
Marx, 467
Classification analysis of groups, 206
Communication, means of, 463
Compromise, 208
Congress, early history, 366; locality
basis, 368
Consciousness, social, 161
Constitutions, 295
Control by "the people," 326, 453
Corporation as activity, 189 fif.; as ad-
justment of interests, 268
Corrupt government, as activity, 191
Courts, development, 382 ff.; their use of
legal theory, 396; their "own" in-
terest, 398
Crawley, 22
Cuba, 291
D
Dartmouth College case, 390
Dead-letter law, 282
Degree of perfection in government,
301
Delegates, 449
Demagogic leadership, 231 fif.
Democracy, 306, 449, 455
Demoulins, 254
Desires as forces, assumptions involved,
29
497
498
THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
Despotisms, 313 ff.; comparison with
American presidency, 357
Dewey, 157, 254
Dicey, 136
Dillon, 122
Discussion groups, 182, 224, 242, 428,
434, 436
Disease and society, 248
Durkheim, 119
Economic basis, 209, 210, 262, 462
Electorate, 423 ff.; two forms of repre-
sentation within it, 425
Ell wood, 156
Ely, 119
Environment, absorbed in activity, 193
ff., 461, 462; social, 195
Feelings and ideas, ordinary service
rendered, 5, 18, 35, 55, 56, 112, 128,
165 ff., 177, 186; provisional scientific
use, 169; hypothetical, 177; not
measurable, 201
Fonillee, 257
Food supply, 247
Force, dangers of term, 217, 258; phys-
ical, in government, 296
Ford, 412, 417
France, 341, 411
Free speech, 433
Future, in interpretation, 219
Gallon, loi
Germany, 339, 363
Giddings, 100, 128 ff., 257
Gods, pagan, their working value, 270
Goodnow, 327, 417
Gorman, 22
Governing body, 262
Government: material for study, 175,
179; distinction from other kinds of
phenomena, 199; the three senses of
the term, 260 ff.; illustrations of
balance of interests in government,
without a differentiated governing
body, 264 ff . ; types of interests
found, 269; relation to law, 287; de-
termination of incidental issues, 290;
filling in of details of law, 293; classi-
fication, 289 ff.; degree of perfection,
301; extreme hypothetical types, 305;
methods for control of the rules, 307;
picturing the status, 458
Great Britain, 342, 364, 408
Great men, their achievements, 14, 15,
109
Greatest good of greatest number,
200
Greek tribes, 324, 331
Greek tyrannies, 337
Groups: masses of men, 176; illustra-
tion of varieties, 182; when physically
separated, 203; criss-cross, 204; as re-
flecting social life (forms of reason-
ing), 204, 205; classification, 208;
pohtical, 209; representative quality
of political groups, 210; group and
group activity equivalent, 211; inter-
est groups, 211; always valued in
terms of one another, 217; group
leadership of group, 225; group basis
of public opinion, 236; representa-
tiveness of opinion groups, 241, 242;
opinion groups also interest groups,
243; pressure a group phenome-
non, 258; adjustment in government,
260; the basis of law, 276; illustra-
tion of pressures, 289 ff . ; when in
opposition to "the government," 309;
pressures in presidency under Roose-
velt, 345 ff. ; produce differentiation
of courts, 387 ; how they work through
legal theory, 394, 397; in parties, 422;
semi-poHtical groups, 428 ff.; organi-
zation and discussion groups con-
trasted, 434; personaUty groups, 440;
technique of groups, 442; "own in-
terest" and "plus as technique," 444;
in representative government and
democracy, 452
Gumplowicz, 100, 468
Gurewitsch, 99
H
Habit background, 218, 260, 372
Hague tribunal, 385
Hammond, 312
Hansemann, 16
Hoar, 451
Hobhouse, 312
INDEX
499
"Idea of the state," 263
Idea, part of "outer world," 170
Ideas, stated in terms of groups, 206,
441
Incest, 96
Individual and society, 84, 90, 195, 215,
246, 445
Individual endowment, physical, 246,
461
Industrial technique, 463
Instinct, 94 ff., 246
Interest, dangers in use of term, 213;
always empirical, 214; types of in-
terests in government, 269
Interest groups, factors of dominance,
number, intensity, technique, 215 ff.;
balanced in government, 264 ff.; per-
fection of adjustment, 301; types of
adjustment in government, 307; the
"own" interest and "plus as tech-
nique," 444. {See Groups.)
Interest in interest groups: defined, 212,
271
Intoxication and society, 248
Invention and discovery, 197
Jellinek, 163, 310, 361
Jenks, 18
Jhering, von, 56 ff., 254
Justice, early forms of, 383
Kautsky, 421, 467
Kropotkin, 21
Labor unions, 268
Lane, 93, 250
Language, as activity, 181; comparison
with organization groups, 182, 183
Law, as activity, 272; senses of, 273;
the main activities involved in, 275;
embodied in groups, 276; defined,
276, 277, 288; illustration as to mur-
der, 278 ff.; illustration of Sunday-
closing law, 280; dead-letter law, 282;
majorities and minorities, 283; the
system j)hasc, 284; as spreading or
generalizing, 287; further illustration
of group pressures, 289 ff. ; prece-
dents, 294; legal theory, 294, 295
Lawyers, part of the social process, 276
Leacock, 312
Leadership, 223 ff.; an affair of the
group, 223; group leadership of
group, 225; capacity of individuals
for, 227; "boss" leadership, 228;
demagogic leadership, 231; the ruler
or mediator, 234
Lecky, 257
Legislature, 317, 360 ff.; American, 365
ff.; volunteer substitutes, 162, 432,
493
Letourneau, 23, 24, 25, 96, 299
LocaHty interests, 303, 368
Log-rolling, 370
Loria, 421
M
Mackenzie, 120, 155
Mac Master, in
Macy, 115
Maeterlinck, 257
Majorities and minorities, 283
Mallock, 121
Manu, Code of, 269
Marriage, adjustment of social interests
through, 247, 265 ff.
Marshall, Chief Justice, 389
Marx, 465 ff.
Mass of population, 462
Measurement, of feeling elements, loi
ff.; and sociology, 200; in practical
social Uving, 201 ff.; of activity,
202
Mediator, 234, 318, 439
"Mental type," 254 ff.
Mill, 117
Montesquieu, 299, 322
Moral qualities, as activity, 192
Morgan, 22, 153 ff.
Moriey, 452
Motion and rest, 186
Municipal-ownership groups in Chicago,
486 ff.
Murder, 278
500
THE PROCESS OF GOVERNMENT
N
Naivct^ of eplstcmological standpoint,
177
Novicow, 155, 257
O
Objectivity, when exaggerated, its ef-
fects, 135
Organ and organism, r8i, 261
Organization groups, 182, 224,242,434,
439
Ostrogorski, 299, 451
"Outer world," contained in idea, 170,
196
"Own" interest of groups, 444
Parties, political, as agencies of govern-
ment, 400 ff.; discussion phase, 404;
policies, 405; development in United
States, 412; conditions producing
them, 417; radical and reactionary,
420
Past, in interpretation, 219
Patten, 119, 257, 480
Pearl, 16
Pearson, loi ff.
"People," control by the, 453
PersonaHty groups, 406, 440
"Plus as technique," 444
Political phenomena, no distinctive
technique, 259, 264
Presidency, United States, history, 344;
under Roosevelt, 345 ff.; compared
with the despot, 357; future of, 359
Pressure, social, 258, 272, 483
Preuss, 163
Psychic factors, quantitative increase,
19, 21, 34, 44, 158, 251
Psychology, attitude toward, 3, 4, 165,
171, 198; experimental, 201
Public opinion, Dicey's view, 137 ff.;
pohtical scientists on, 163; unanimity
a myth, 223; its "push," 236; what
it strikes at, 237; an affair of the
groups, 236, 238; degrees of differen-
tiation, 239; degree of intensity, 240;
opinion groups are also interest
groups, 243; tests in party politics,
419
Public-school laws, 377
R
Race: and brain power, 20, 21, 249;
moral quaHties, 22, 23; necessary
tests, 25; endowment, 252; type, 253;
various meanings, 256; and class,
304
Ratzcl, 20
Ratzenhofer, 120, 257, 311, 476
Reasoning, as technique, 204, 216, 360,
361, 372, 376. 442, 448
Reid, 16
Reflection of interests. {See Represent-
ation of interests. )
"Relations" as activity, 176
Representation of interests, 177, 197, 199,
206, 209, 210, 2ig, 223, 233, 236, 238,
240, 262, 269, 270, 289, 290, 294, 315,
332, 359, 389. 393, 395, 397, 4oi, 407,
425, 428, 436, 443, 450, 465
Representative government, 449
Rest and motion, 186
Ripley, 16, 252
Rome, 338, 362
Roosevelt, 345 ff., 388
Ross, 92, 155
Ruler, methods for his control, 307
ff.
Russia, 315, 335
Selfishness, reaction against, 139
Seligman, 120
Sex and food desires, 93
Sex background of society, 247, 265
Sherman anti-trust law, 353
Simmel, 472
Small, 26 ff., 38, 166, 476, 478
" Social environment," 195
"Social heredity," 196
Social institutions, limits of adapta-
bility, 249
"Social whole," 220
Social will, 154 ff., 328, 361
Socialism, 114, 208, 226, 305, 436 ff.,
467
Socially indifferent, the, 292
Society personified, 79
Sovereignty, 132, 264, 273
Spartans, 269
INDEX
501
Spencer, 37 ff., 310
"Spirit of the Age," 151, 419
State, 263, 300
Statehood bill, 372 ff.
State's rights, 113, 376
Statistics, 200
Steamboat regulation, 354
Stein, 121
Subjective and objective, 89, 117 foot-
note, 186, 196
Sunday-closing law, 28c
Sympathies, differentiation, 6, 7, 46, 47,
52, 55
Sympathy, comparison of races, 21 ff.
"System" in law, 284
System, phase of acti%ity, 218
Tariff reform, 347
Tendencies of activity, 184 ff
Theories, legal, their representative
value, 273, 294, 394
Thomas, 97
Tocqueville, de, 313, 414
Tolstoi, 117
Tradition, 219
Truth, 172, 243
Tylor, 482
V
Values, of idea factors, 172
W
Ward, 91, 155
Wealth groups, 462
Westermarck, 93-99
Willoughby, 118
Woman's suffrage, 425
Woods, 107 ff.
Z
Zeno, rest and motion, 186
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